By The domestic box office for 2023 is at an end, with the industry just making it to the $9 billion dollar mark – even with a strike-impacted release schedule and no major tentpole over the Xmas/New Year holiday.
Deadline and Comscore analysts report that Universal Pictures has won this year amongst the studios, the company taking the crown for the first time since 2015.
Universal pulled in $1.93 billion for 2023 by end of Sunday – up 18% on last year and buoyed by “The Super Mario Bros Movie” ($575M), “Oppenheimer” ($326M), “Fast X” ($150M) and “Five Nights at Freddy’s” ($137M).
Disney is in second place, coming damn close with $1.89 billion – down just 2% from last year despite all the talk of it being a ‘tough year’ for the Mouse House. It had hits like “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($359M), “The Little Mermaid” ($298M), ongoing business from last year’s “Avatar: The Way of Water” ($283M in 2023), “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania” ($215M) and “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” ($174M).
Warner Bros. Pictures was third with $1.4 billion, up 50% on its 2022 haul. “Barbie” ($636M) made up nearly half that total on its own as well as being the biggest movie domestically of 2023. Nothing else on their slate came close, though “Wonka” at $135 million at the end of the year is doing good business for them.
Sony Pictures was fourth with $955 million, up 13% on 2022 with a good chunk of it coming from the animated sequel “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($381M). The rest was mostly adult-targeted fare, including “The Equalizer 3” ($92M) and “Napoleon” ($60M). Sony will have tentpoles like “Bad Boys 4,” “Venom 3” and “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” next year to boost its numbers.
Paramount Pictures was fifth with $837 million, the only major to see a big drop with a fall of 35% of last year – mostly due to the lack of a “Top Gun: Maverick”-sized juggernaut. Its biggest hits domestically were underperforming titles like “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One” ($172M) and “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” ($157M). “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” ($119M) and “Scream VI” ($108M) on the other hand fared better than expected.
Lionsgate was sixth with $580 million – up a jaw-dropping 623% from 2022. This year three films of theirs handily beat that mark all on their own – “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes” ($323M), “John Wick: Chapter 4” ($187M) and “Saw X” ($111M).
Amazon MGM was seventh with $270 million – up 164% thanks primarily to “Creed III” ($156M), “Air” ($52M), “The Boys in the Boat” ($25M) and “Saltburn” ($11M).
In eighth and ninth were two newcomers powered primarily by a single hit. First was Variance Films whose deal with AMC Theaters resulted in the $180 million success of “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour,” and the other was Angel Studios whose $184 million success “Sound of Freedom” was a massive Middle America hit.
Rounding out the top ten was A24 with $137 million which was up 15%, buoyed by Australian horror “Talk to Me” ($48M), “Priscilla” ($21M) and “The Iron Claw” ($18M).
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