Global box office forecasts for 2024 are better than expected but still poor

Timothée Chalamet in “Dune: Part 2”

Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures

Things are looking a little better than expected.

In honor of this year’s CinemaCon, analytics firm Gower Street has released an updated global box office forecast that expects revenues to be stronger than originally expected for 2024.

Gower Street expects theater revenue this year to reach $32.3 billion, up from the $31.5 billion it originally expected. That’s still less than the $33.9 billion it earned worldwide last year and $10 billion less than its peak box office of $42.3 billion before the pandemic.

Gower said the international market, excluding China, will account for most of the gains, with box office projections expected to reach $550 million ahead of the original forecast of $16.2 billion. It is also expected to bring in a domestic box office of $200 million, above initial projections of $8.2 billion. China, the only one of the three major markets expected to show year-on-year growth compared to 2023, is expected to generate $7.9 billion, on par with previous estimates.

Gower said changes to the release calendar since its debut, with more titles being added, were the main reason for the increase. They noted that the box office rise would actually be higher when calculated in local currency, but the strong US dollar had essentially wiped out “more than a third of the gains seen collectively across international markets.”

The new numbers will be of little solace to hard-hit distributors. Even with the improving outlook, Gower expects the global box office this year to decline by 5% from 2023, the first year-over-year decline after the pandemic. The revised estimate for 2024 is still 18% below the average over the last three years before the pandemic, 2017-2019.

Gower Street attributes the year-over-year decline to Hollywood’s historic dual labor strikes that have slowed production and delayed the release of several big films this year.