5 Movies That Helped Save The Box Office In 2024

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It's been a wild few years at the box office. The 2020 lockdowns put theaters and Hollywood in a terrible place, and the recovery has been slower than expected. But 2023 offered hope, as the domestic box office hit $9 billion, getting us closer to pre-pandemic normals. Then the SAG and WGA strikes happened, which completely destroyed the release calendar for the first half of 2024. Because of that, theaters were once again forced to weather a brutal storm.

The first half of 2024 was close to a disaster. Not only were we left without any blockbuster releases for months on end but, once they started coming, the first several proved to be disappointments out of the gate (we're talking about films such as "The Fall Guy" and "Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga"). It all looked pretty bleak for a bit, with the domestic box office trailing more than 20% last year's total heading into summer.

Luckily, things rebounded better than we could have hoped for, with massive films like "Deadpool & Wolverine," "Despicable Me 4," "Dune: Part Two," and "Beetlejuice Beetlejuice," among others, helping to close the gap. More importantly, several movies helped to fill the void and keep theaters afloat during some serious down periods on the calendar. These movies helped the industry avoid what I would classify as a crisis.

As 2024 comes to a close, it's time to highlight some of the movies that quite literally helped theaters keep the lights on this year.

MGM

Even in a good year, a big movie is tough to come by in January. On occasion you have something like Liam Neeson's action flick "Taken" that can breakout and become a surprise hit. On the whole, though, it's often a lousy month for the industry. That being the case, expectations were especially low this year given that the strikes had just ended and the first chunk of 2024 had been left largely barren by Hollywood. Enter director David Ayer's "The Beekeeper," a purposefully ridiculous action movie starring Jason Statham that proved to be a hit beyond anyone's expectations.

The combination of Statham kicking ass and a lack of direct competition benefited this movie greatly. Audiences also got behind the truly silly concept of a retired super secret agent becoming a literal beekeeper only to be called back to action to "protect the hive," as it were. Paramount also had the "Mean Girls" musical in theaters around this time and, credit where credit is due, that movie did great in theaters ($104.7 million worldwide), especially since the original plan was for the film to go directly to Paramount+.

"The Beekeeper" thrived alongside the competition, pulling in a truly surprising $152.7 million worldwide. It was David Ayer's first theatrical hit since "Suicide Squad," and carried a modest budget of $40 million. It was a home run for Amazon and MGM. "Mean Girls" always seemed like it had upside potential given how beloved the original is. "The Beekeeper" was an original movie that helped ensure it wasn't just one modest hit carrying the box office through January.

That's what's key here. If we can't have one big hit, having two mid-sized hits can help make up the difference. "The Beekeeper" was that much-needed other hit.

Disney

It might sound silly to highlight the highest-grossing movie of the year on this list, but some context is needed when we discuss the truly outlandish success of "Inside Out 2." If it were five years ago, a Pixar sequel making well over $1 billion worldwide would hardly be news. That's how hard Disney and Pixar were crushing it at one point. The pandemic changed all of that, though, and things have been wildly uncertain for a couple of years — particularly after "Lightyear" bombed in 2022.

Because Disney sent several Pixar originals, including "Luca" and "Soul," directly to Disney+, there wasn't a lot of certainty that all Pixar films would be given theatrical releases moving forward. Moreover, could a new Pixar movie do what these movies used to do in their heyday? The answer is a resounding yes. Building off of the success of "Elemental" last year, "Inside Out 2" demolished all expectations with a record-shattering opening en route to becoming the biggest animated movie of all time, overtaking "Frozen II" and 2016's "The Lion King." Put plainly, we'd be talking about the 2024 box office, overall, far more harshly had this film not performed the way it did. 

With $1.69 billion to its name, "Inside Out 2" is by far the biggest movie of 2024. More than that though, it came in June after a disastrous start to the summer, with films like "The Fall Guy" and "Furiosa" falling well short of expectations. Things felt dire. This sequel then gave the box office a major shot of life, while also renewing our collective hopes that Pixar can still be a pillar of spectacular animated cinema — made for the big screen — for years to come. Pixar for the win, now more than ever.

Sony Pictures

There are always going to be monster blockbusters like "Deadpool & Wolverine," a $1.3 billion behemoth superhero success story. And even if superhero movies go away for awhile, some form of populist blockbuster will take their place. What matters is that the industry at large should try and counterprogram around those blockbusters so that we have a robust, well-rounded, healthy theatrical marketplace. No movie proved that better than "It Ends With Us" in 2024.

Starring Blake Lively and Justin Baldoni in a tale of doomed romance, this was a film firmly aimed at women, adapting the very popular book of the same name. Sony Pictures wound up with a monster hit, one that actually kicked "Deadpool & Wolverine" out of the top spot at the box office, albeit briefly. It resonated with the intended audience in a bigger-than-expected way, serving as a late summer surprise that helped end the season on a high note, rather than let it conclude on a whimper after a few big-budget hits ran their course.

As films like "Borderlands" flamed out in spectacular fashion, this mid-budget love story was there to help pick up the slack. Credit to Sony for somehow making this one on a $25 million budget, which means it was probably the most profitable mainstream movie of the year, given its $350 million global total. It's the kind of hit that Hollywood could learn a lesson or two from. A popular book turned into a popular movie aimed at an often ignored demographic? What a concept.

Cineverse

Horror has been the big savior of the box office during the pandemic era. Movies like "The Black Phone," "M3GAN," and even this year's "Longlegs" have been there to help give a string of reliable hits that can be produced relatively cheaply so that everyone wins. But "Terrifier 3" is on another level entirely. We're talking about an unrated, ultra-gory slasher set at Christmas that ranks as one of the biggest horror movies of 2024, and one that really helped carry October.

In 2022, "Terrifier 2" made $15 million worldwide and became a true surprise hit. So yes, all eyes were on director Damien Leone's next sequel. What nobody could have anticipated is that the audience for Art the Clown and his brand of carnage would grow by orders of magnitude over the last two years. So much so that "Terrifier 3" managed to top the charts at the domestic box office in its first weekend of release, ranking as one of the biggest surprises in the history of people tacking box office.

All told, Cineverse and Bloody Disgusting's uncompromising bloody slasher has made $89 million worldwide and counting. With an upcoming re-release, it may well see $100 million before all is said and done. I'm prepared to call it the most unlikely $100 million in history when/if that happens. Those many millions of dollars helped serve as a bright spot in what was a slow start to the fall season. This was a much-needed hit in addition to being a surprise one.

Nobody expected Damien Leone's latest entry on the saga of Art the Clown to be this big of a hit. Here we are nevertheless. We thank you for your service.

Prime Video

It's easy to roll one's eyes at the inclusion of "Red One" as any kind of savior. It's truly a relic of the streaming wars past, with Amazon paying an ungodly amount of money for The Rock to star in a big Christmas action movie. It's an irresponsibly expensive film. It won't even come close to recouping its budget in its theatrical run. It was also an absolute godsend for theaters that helped fill a crucial blank spot on the calendar before "Wicked" and "Gladiator II" delivered a massive box office double whammy, followed closely by "Moana 2." This was the unsung hero of all unsung heroes in 2024, in my view.

"Red One" wasn't made with a theatrical release in mind. When it got super expensive, Amazon decided to give it a shot on the big screen. That was a wise decision, as the release ended up boosting the movie's profile before its Prime Video debut. It also helped theaters get by after "Venom: The Last Dance" ran out of gas and before Thanksgiving brought forth greener pastures.

Here's the thing: Netflix makes gigantic movies all of the time and either dumps them straight to streaming or gives them a tiny theatrical release mostly to qualify for awards. Amazon was never going to profit from this film in theaters. But you know who really benefited? The theater owners who got $165 million (and counting) worth of ticket sales at an otherwise dry time. "Red One" may not bet a hit, but it can't quite be called a flop either given its odd release strategy and how it was funded. Whatever the case, without this movie, theaters would have had to endure a truly dire couple of weeks. This is money that truly matters in the grand scheme of things.

Am I in favor of spending more than $200 million on a movie like this? Of course not. It's the kind of thing I rail against all the time. Would I rather see those movies in theaters rather than rotting on streaming when theaters could benefit from the traffic they bring in? Without question.