Packed Holiday Box Office Speaks to Misguided Scheduling Strategies

After a summer box office of hits and misses, the fall season of movies has slowed to a crawl, with far less output from the major studios.

But even if exhibitors are excited for the oncoming pileup of “Wicked,” “Gladiator 2” and “Moana 2” that will kick off the holiday season this Thanksgiving, it’s not necessarily a good thing for all parties. 

As a result of the disappointing gross of “Joker 2,” October repeated 2024’s prevailing trend of falling year over year from 2023, a fate only March, August and September have avoided. Warner Bros.’ “Dune 2” was a temporary reprieve in early spring, while late summer hits including “Deadpool & Wolverine” and “Twisters,” plus June’s “Inside Out 2,” kept things lively enough through August to surpass that month’s total last year, with help from modest hits “It Ends With Us” and “Alien: Romulus.”

At least “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” lifted September’s prospects at a time when the full brunt of the post-strike impact could be felt on the calendar, with little to no major studio releases in the run-up to “Joker.”

As much as the Thanksgiving holiday will change that, betting on that end-of-year window when the fall months were dying for new releases comes across as a scheduling error on the part of major studios.

Some movie fans are already betting on the shared Nov. 22 release window of “Gladiator II” and “Wicked” as the next “Barbenheimer” phenomenon, after tonally opposite “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” released over one July 2023 weekend to incredible audience attendance.

But that was one summer weekend. The extended Thanksgiving weekend isn’t just those two releases, as Disney’s “Moana 2” is also around the corner. As family friendly as “Wicked” is, animated films are back in full form this year. “Inside Out 2” remains the best film of the year and was complemented by excellent turnout for “Despicable Me 4” and “Kung Fu Panda 4.”

While its theatrical reception was more modest, “The Wild Robot” also worked alongside “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” to lift exhibitors’ spirits throughout October’s dreary weekends. It wasn’t only “Joker 2” that stagnated; Paramount’s “Smile 2” horror sequel has earned only around half of its predecessor, while “Venom: The Last Dance” has yet to break $100 million domestically, despite its status as Sony’s No. 2 licensed Marvel property.

It would be a challenge to shake the studios’ fixation on holiday windows in a year as slow as 2024. After all, Sony’s R-rated “Kraven the Hunter” was supposed to come out more than a year ago, before the strike shake-ups. At least Sony is smart enough to have sandwiched “Kraven” between the two big holidays, where it has a bit of room to breathe before Disney’s “Mufasa” chases the billion-dollar success of 2019’s CG remake of “The Lion King” alongside Paramount’s third “Sonic the Hedgehog” outing.

More bizarre is Angel Studios. It’s been more than a year since Angel’s surprise summer hit “Sound of Freedom” dominated the 4th of July window, but Angel has struggled to eke out anything like that over multiple holiday releases since then. Its “Sight” floundered over Memorial Day, and “Sound of Hope” made less than $12 million as a spiritual follow-up to “Freedom” in the same window.

Somehow, Angel has kept “Bonhoeffer” and “Homestead” locked to their holiday release dates, as if neither is at substantial risk of continuing this pattern. Given how much “Sound of Freedom” benefited from the nation’s increasingly extreme political shift toward paranoia and mistrust, did no one think societal-collapse thriller “Homestead” might be better suited for this weekend, days after the U.S. presidential election?

Even mega-budgeted “Gladiator 2” seems strange as a Thanksgiving option. Until the holiday, November is pretty much dead if you aren’t on A24’s arthouse train or ready for a couple of Christmas-themed films from Lionsgate and Amazon MGM, which clearly timed those pictures to hit digital windows by the actual holiday. It seems rather silly that Searchlight’s Bob Dylan biopic “A Complete Unknown” and Focus Features’ new take on horror classic “Nosferatu” are the big options for Christmas Day, rather than a studio tentpole.

That’s not a knock on the ongoing fan obsession over “Complete Unknown” star Timothée Chalamet nor “Nosferatu” director Robert Eggers, who is a big name in modern horror. It’s just odd Paramount wouldn’t want to slot Ridley Scott’s “Gladiator” sequel in the longer holiday window, especially when it would have a few days away from the bows of “Mufasa” and “Sonic,” as opposed to sharing the spotlight with “Wicked” right before “Moana 2” this Thanksgiving. 

Given how September and October combined made a little over $1 billion — less than a third of the $3.4 billion the last four months of this year would need to deliver to match 2023’s gross — it’s clear 2024 was destined to be a crapshoot. But placing remaining bets on such crowded holiday windows seems like a surefire way to add more to the year’s disappointments.