By now, on the eve of Barbieheimer, most of the narratives of this summer movie season have been written (some of them by me). It’s mid-July, and nothing has come close to the box office haul of Super Mario Bros. Movie, worldwide or domestically. Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which was expected by most people to be middle of the pack this summer, is the highest-grossing film of the summer. So clearly it’s been a good year for animation, right? In terms of quality, sure, but Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken had the worst ever DreamWorks animation showing by far and Elemental fell short of Pixar standards, even if it has had a nice international run since a disappointing opening. This is to say nothing of the catastrophic failure of The Flash and very notable failure of Indiana Jones 5. Even Tom Cruise couldn’t turn the fortunes as Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning, Part One came in shy of expectations.
It’s been a bleak summer in terms of movie quality and, especially, box office. For a summer that had so many interesting storylines coming in, and all of them clouded by a writers strike and impending/now realized actors strike, the storylines all simplified to doom and gloom. It’s so bleak people are pinning hope to a 3-hour R-rated nuclear war drama. Yikes.
So rather than beat the dead horse that is this summer box office, I want to pose a series of “what if” questions, and thought experiments imagining how the fortunes of this summer could have been different. These are all fairly realistic scenarios that are mostly related to release times and strategies, not the actual stuff in the movies themselves.
What if…Across the Spider-Verse had come out in October 2022?
This movie had been planned to release in April of ’22, and then was bumped back to October of ’22, so, in the spirit of multiverse thinking, we have to start here. I would suspect this movie would do very well in October just as in June, maybe even giving Pinocchio a run at the Oscars (and making 2022 an even more historically great year for animation). As for this summer, what would have taken its place? Would The Flash have moved up? It’s difficult to imagine how additionally bleak this summer would be without Spider-Verse, but perhaps something would have filled this gap.
What if…Super Mario Bros. opened over July 4th weekend?
This isn’t that unthinkable as this is where Minions: The Rise of Gru opened last year. For the sake of argument we’d have to shift things a bit, maybe nudge some things back a week or two. It’s hard to imagine Mario making more money than it has, so I won’t theorize that. But it would flip the narrative of the year substantially. Spring would be seen as disappointing, and summer would have some huge winners—Mario, Spider-Verse, maybe Barbie?—and then all the losers we’ve talked about. But box office-wise, it would be a very different vibe. And that’s important to remember, because Mario was basically a summer movie season movie that just happened to be released in April, like Captain America: The Winter Soldier was way back in 2014.
What if…Evil Dead Rise came out in May or June?
Talk to Me comes out next week, probably opening fairly wide given a lack of competition, but I can’t get over how desolate this summer has been for horror. There have been two notable entries, The Boogeyman—debuted at 12.4 million then ended up at 43 domestically—and Insidious: The Red Door—33 for the debut, currently at 58 domestically. Based on budget and expectations, Insidious is a hit however you spin it, but it also had pretty bad reviews. Evil Dead Rise had pretty good reviews. It brought in 67 million domestically back in April before being pushed out by Guardians of the Galaxy vol. 3. If it had been released sometime this summer, maybe opposite Fast X or something, I think Evil Dead Rise could have made another 20 or 30 million than it did domestically and have given the summer the horror hit it has mostly lacked, Insidious’s performance being overshadowed by Indy’s failure.
What if…Elemental had come out just one week later?
Elemental, of course, came out the same week as The Flash. The Flash won round one, though Elemental rallied in later rounds to ultimately win the fight. In April, there wasn’t much difference between releasing opposite Flash week 1 or week 2. If it was a hit—and the word of mouth out of CinemaCon was unreasonably high on this movie—then it would command attention in week 2 just as in week 1. Of course, The Flash fell like a rock and surrendered many of its screens even the next weekend. Elemental disappointed with a 30 million debut. I think that would be 20-30 million higher if it had come out a week later. This is my biggest “what if” of this piece because it is such a possible scenario that likely would have had a pretty big difference. Anyway, Elemental is great, and you should go see it if you haven’t.
What if…The Marvels were still on the schedule for July 28th?
The Marvels, now on its 5th release date, is going to come out in November, but it was going to come out next week. Disney moved it after the disappointing opening of Ant-Man. Just to underscore how strange this year has been, Ant-Man’s opening was disappointing, but it’s also STILL a top 5 domestic opening of the year. Given the rest of the year to date, the “disappointment” of Ant-Man looks a lot less noteworthy than it did in February. This is a tough one to picture because the marketing would be so different. Disney would have put out a second trailer by now and we’d have a much clearer sense of the enthusiasm around The Marvels, but I think the enthusiasm is decent, and the summer certainly has the space for it. It seemed like a good move to push it back when Disney did it in February, but now I’m not so sure. It could have been yet another disappointment for Disney this summer. But it’s hard to imagine it could fail harder than I think Haunted Mansion will fail next week.
That’s all I have right now. I still have hope for the quality of several more movies in this summer season even if only Barbie seems likely to make much money. I have extremely high hopes for the quality of movies coming out this fall, and will be back with a preview of them soon. There are other things in the works, but with such a flat summer at theaters and the strikes going on, I haven’t been sure what to write about.
If you have topics you’d like me to address, feel free to comment below or message me on Instagram (@dgillespie42).
