With the Oscars having signalled the official end to the previous year's slate of films, we've all begun looking ahead to what the rest of 2013 has in store. And combining that what what's been released in theatres since January, there's been a lot of concern about this year's prospects when it comes to the box office. Throughout January and February, for example, 2013's movies grossed a total of $1.44 billion, which sounds impressive until you realize that it's 12.5% behind the pace that 2012 set throughout the first two months of the year. And that's only going to get worse in March, as Jack the Giant Slayer has already played to disappointing results, and even if 2013's March tentpoles (Oz the Great and Powerful and the upcoming Dreamworks animated flick The Croods) do big business, they'll almost certainly lag behind last year's juggernaut that was The Hunger Games.
However, despite all this doom and gloom, there are three major reasons why I don't think it's worth getting too worked up over 2013's lackluster box office thus far (unless you're a studio executive, of course).
1) The success of 2012's Oscar-nominated films skewed the box office.
January and February have actually been very successful months for several films, such as Silver Linings Playbook ($97 million grossed in 2013), Django Unchained ($92 million), Zero Dark Thirty ($88 million), and Les Miserables ($75 million). Even several other Oscar nominated films like Lincoln, Argo, and Life of Pi grossed between $30 and $35 million in 2013. This is obviously great news both for the Oscars and the studios behind those films, but one counter-effect of this success is that the money these films made is counted towards 2012's total grosses, not 2013's. Compare the amount of money those films made to the previous year's Oscar nominees, which were led by The Descendants with only $44 million, and you get a difference of over $200 million. That's a huge chunk of people that were still going to the movies in 2013, but they just weren't seeing 2013's films, because the Oscar nominees from 2012 were simply more appealing choices. This helps explain why early 2012 films like Collateral, Safe House and The Vow managed to earn far more money than predicted, while comparable 2013 films like Broken City, A Good Day to Die Hard, and Safe Haven performed poorly. 2012's early films simply didn't have the same level of competition that 2013 did.
2) 2012 was a record-breaking year, and isn't likely to be repeated.
If the past few years have shown anything, it's that while the movie industry continues to grow, it's no longer feasible to expect every year to improve on the one before it. From 1992 to 2004, total domestic box office increased every year, growing from $4.9 billion in 1992 to $9.4 billion in 2004. Then suddenly, in 2005 the industry dipped 6% to $8.8 billion, and since then, the years have alternated between moderate growths and slight dips until 2012's $10.8 billion box office, a 3.7% increase over 2011.
What do these numbers show? Beyond the simple fact that not every year is going to be a record-breaker, I think they also show that a calendar year's total box office is more dependent on how much money a few massive blockbuster bring in, and thus isn't really indicative of the film industry's health on the whole. For example, nearly 15% of 2012's entire record-breaking box office was the result of three $400 million-grossing films: The Avengers, The Dark Knight Rises, and The Hunger Games. And in 2009, the box office jumped up a massive 10% from the previous year almost entirely due to Avatar. This isn't a new phenomenon either. Going all the way back to 1982, a movie like E.T. caused the yearly box office to increase a massive 16% over 1981.
3) 2012's strong start helped to cover its weaknesses later in the year.
I mentioned The Hunger Games previously, which along with other big early 2012 films like The Lorax and 21 Jump Street have given that year a big advantage over 2013's slate of films thus far. Like I said, even with a 2013 movie like Oz the Great and Powerful being a big success, it simply isn't enough to make up the difference all on its own. But these films, along with the previously-mentioned summer blockbusters The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, really helped to cover the fact that a lot of 2013's summer films ended up either just meeting average expectations, like The Amazing Spider-Man, MIB 3, Brave, and Prometheus, disappointing, like Dark Shadows, The Dictator, and The Bourne Legacy, or outright bombing hard, like Battleship, Rock of Ages, That's My Boy, and The Watch.
These kinds of ebbs and flows at the box office are of course natural and will change from one year to the next, so although this year's box office may have gotten off to a poor start, that doesn't mean that the public has abandoned the movie theaters and that the rest of the year is doomed to be a failure. And even if, as is likely, a strong summer season still leaves 2013 lagging slightly behind 2012's record-breaking year, that just means that 2014 is more likely to tip the scales back the other way.
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