Summer box office tops $4.2 billion, surpasses 2019 pace

Movie theater chains across the country are wrapping up a summer that generated more than $4.2 billion in domestic ticket sales — running about 5.7% ahead of the pre-pandemic summer of 2019 and on track to rank among the five biggest summers of all time, according to the Associated Press. Rentrak’s head of marketplace trends, Paul Dergarabedian, said the total is only about $130 million shy of the record $4.8 billion set in the summer of 2013.

B&B Theatres CEO Bob Bagby said his staff scrambled to add screenings at odd hours, including 8 a.m. and 2:30 a.m., to keep up with demand for “Spider-Man: Brand New Day.”

“We just kept selling out,” Mr. Bagby said, recalling that employees worked without a day off but stayed upbeat about the turnout.

The Tom Holland-led Sony release pushed past “Avengers: Endgame” as the biggest domestic debut of all time in its opening weekend, according to an ABC News report on updated figures released by Sony Pictures. The film has since climbed past $2 billion worldwide. 

Around the same time, Christopher Nolan’s Greek epic “The Odyssey” was drawing its own devoted following. Maya Cinemas marketing director Greg Heckmann said the two films combined for the biggest collective weekend in box office history, and credited Mr. Nolan with making the picture a must-see on the big screen “no matter the format.” Nolan’s film, which set an all-time IMAX box-office record earlier this month, has generated $1.29 billion globally, with IMAX alone accounting for $354 million of that haul, per Variety.

Actress Anne Hathaway, who appeared in several of the summer’s biggest films, said moviegoing never really disappeared.

“For me, they never went away,” Ms. Hathaway said. “I was just wondering where everybody was.”

Flix Brewhouse chief revenue officer Chris Randleman said the fall slate, while lacking a marquee tentpole, offers volume and variety, pointing to Tom Cruise’s “Digger,” “Practical Magic 2” and a “Resident Evil” reboot.

Exhibitors are more bullish about the holiday season, banking on releases including “Avengers: Doomsday,” “Dune: Part III” and “Jumanji: Open World” to push annual domestic revenue toward $10 billion for the first time since the pandemic. Still, theater owners are watching the pending Paramount-Warner Bros. Discovery merger warily, worried it could shrink the pipeline of new films the way Disney’s 2019 acquisition of 20th Century Fox did. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has pledged to keep output high, promising at least 30 films a year between the combined studios.