DC appears to be on life support while MCU is showing signs of fatigue though still much more lucrative than it's peer. It seems moviegoers are still embracing films but the Shazam rejection, underwhelming Black Adam and Ant Man runs are indicative of a larger shift. MCU ruled from 2008 and feels like it may have peaked in 2019 at least for the near term so there is an opportunity for the next big film craze.

With that said, 6 of the top 11 movies in 2022 were still superheros. 5 of the top 6 movies in 2021 were superhero movies.

Fantasy books turned movies seemed to have a huge run in the 2000s and early 2010s with HP, LOTR, Narnia and the Hunger Games and other variations like Divergent.

We had a flood of toy IP movies like Transformers, GI Joe make their way to the market so we'll see Barbie does though it feels more late 2000s and early 2010s.

Other big crazes also seem to be losing some steam like the animated re-imaginings Disney had such big success with. SW saw oversaturation and less well received films dilute the brand.

So what do we expect will be the next big box office craze? Some initial speculation:

1) Are we set for a big video game craze?

Super Mario is expected to be massive. Sonic and Uncharted have had very solid runs. The Last of Us is getting huge ratings on TV. Mortal Kombat had a respectable run for a Covid release. Tomb Raider and Pokemon movies are in the works. Will we get a universe of Nintendo movie spinoffs doing big box office grosses after Mario starts things off?

2) Another trend I could see returning as we're seeing roots of it is remakes and reimaginings to a flood of 90s IP.

TGM showed a model that could work but 90s still has big appeal and is trendy right now so could reflect in big movie box office too. Jumanji was also HUGE as a reimagining and made 4X it's uninflated predecessor's tally.

3) I could also see a boom in high production comedies.

Jumanji and Deadpool played like those and are the only big comedies I can think of to do $200M+ in the last 10 years. We had movies like Wedding Crashers (2005), The Hangover series (2009, 2011), Ted (2012) and the POTC series (2003, 2006, 2007, 2011), Night At The Museum (2006), Meet The Fockers (2004) all do $200M+ over a 8 year period so think we're due for another run of big blockbuster comedies.

4) Disaster movies

They seemed to rule the 90s to early 2000s from ID4, Twister, Day After Tomorrow, Titanic, etc. They are pure escapism but have also been so overdone so maybe a fresh take on them could start a new flood of them? Leaning towards no on this one.

5) Thrillers and High Production Horror

I remember the era of huge box office tallies for thrillers like What Lies Beneath. Joker showed the immense box office potential there even if it was based on a superhero character played more like an adult skewing thriller. The IT series also made huge box office waves with their tallies so there's a lot of $ for the right films.

6) High Production Historical Dramas

Napoleon movie coming, Gladiator 2. Could historical epics make a big comeback?

7) Musicals

We saw some epic disasters like West Side Story's reboot and Cats but also some huge runs like The Greatest Showman and Encanto if it stayed in theaters seems like it would have kept going for a while. With the Wicked movies coming with Ariana Grande, could we see a big musicals comeback?

Others?

What will the next big box office craze be once we get through the current wave of superhero movies?

Video games would be the best bet if not how much will be going to TV. Something like God of War would have had potential to break out but now it's just going to be an Amazon show.

I'm cheering for a full grunge after hair metal boomerang towards the genres that have been neglected like comedies/romcoms/star vehicle dramas, however it's probably wishful thinking. I did write recently about how after superheroes, movies about relative normal people but played by stars feels more fresh http://wokj.worldofkj.com/the-anti-superhero-movie/

When westerns became less popular, there was still hits with western elements, like how Smokey and the Bandit is clearly just a western with Burt Reynolds in a car instead of on a horse, or Star Wars is western inspired. So the post superhero route could be characters who aren't superheroes but essentially do the same thing. This would suggest traditional action heroes would have potential to have a revival. Hence stuff like Maverick, he's not a superhero, but he's kind of halfway between human and superhero.

Hollywood mined the vast IP for superheroes. There's perhaps an even larger original IP for video games out there. Could be a gold mine, but the past doesn't bode well for it.

I'm feeling a return for the nationalistic star-driven war movie considering World War III seems to be on the verge of happening, and Top Gun: Maverick showed that there's an appetite for it. It's been a long while since films like Black Hawk Down, Saving Private Ryan, We Were Soldiers, etc. ruled the box office. But the films will need stars. None of this Devotion or Midway bull shit.

Superhero movies will be fine if the studios are capable of increasing the quality

Hopefully cheap, original, well written movies... lol

I think there is definitely an oversaturation of superhero movies. It's too much. MCU will probably never downright fail but they need to focus on quality if they want people to give a fuck

Nobody has been able to repeat Marvel's success. Surely that will teach atleast someone a lesson about copy/pasting someone else's homework?

I think you just need to sell people on the idea that a movie Needs to be seen in theaters even though they could just wait a month or two to get it on itunes or one of the streamers. Action-blockbusters with groundbreaking spectacle, horror and comedy. The rest will struggle.

Video games 100%. Whoever manages to make a good Zelda adaptation is sitting on a gold mine.

Also I think we will see more successful adaptations of roleplaying type games like Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering. Maybe even Yu Gi Oh. Millennial nostalgia is kicking in big time for some of those.

I wouldn't be surprised at all if some random Japanese movie which pushes all the right buttons (heart & soul & fun) delivers on a worldwide level, lifting the boat for all things Japanese, creating a new craze...

Spot on. I think this is it.

Across genres it needs to be MUST SEE on a big screen and also actually be a good film.

I thought about this one and would love to see some type of Pixar + Studio Ghibli jointly made movie. Feel like they are the two animation studios at the top of their game and we already have seen Disney + Pixar collaboration post Pixar acquisition. The Baby Yoda short Studio Ghibli did for Disney+ was very good!

Spirited Away made $10,055,859 domestically in its first run. If it had hypothetically come out in 2023 and won the best animated Oscar, prestige and post Netflix streaming all of the studio's films to build a big following of the other movies, I feel it could have possibly made a run for $100M.

if we get top talent (behind and in front of the camera) for Cyberpunk (Blade Runner, The Matrix) and Steampunk (Wild Wild West, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen) that could do very well.

I remember proposing in one of the forums in the late 90s / early 00s having Choose Your Adventure films:

The filmmakers would need to create a story with multiple branching paths, allowing for different outcomes based on the choices made by the audience. The story would need to be engaging and entertaining regardless of the choices made, so that the audience is invested in the outcome.

The film would branch out in the 2nd act. Instead of a democratic vote by remote control, the audience would have immersive glasses that allow each person to select and then see 'their' version (or that choice could occur when they purchase a ticket).

Perhaps each branch has the exact same runtime so that the 3rd act brings everyone together but maybe there could be some telltale sign of that person's choice in the unified 3rd act (or superimpose their name somewhere in the 3rd act of the film) so that they feel included.

Not sure if the technology is there to make this happen but it could be a game changer. A bit gimmicky, like an amusement park attraction, but that doesn't have to be a bad thing.

Netflix did a Choose Your Own Adventure type thing but feels that type of opp is so much bigger. I'd love some type of escape room + theme park ride + movie + concert type immersive experience which brings everything together but the budget for putting some of that together in a high quality way could be astronical. Netflix's felt gimmicky when they tried it.

Ahh, I didn't know about the Netflix project. Yea there would have to be a way to contain costs. Perhaps not an entire 2nd act but certain key scenes. I think about the quick cuts and editing of Memento and think that rapid scene transitions and fragmented yet cohesive approach that Nolan took with that movie seems ideally suited for a Choose Your Own Adventure movie adaptation..


I like your Escape Room idea.

Another genre I think is due for a big comeback is westerns.

TV westerns are the THING right now with so many spinoffs from Yellowstone, Tulsa King, 1883, etc. on TV with A list movie stars. Movies are due for a big comeback. There are also a bunch of international western TV shows being made.

Yellowstone's season 5 premiere last year was the top season premiere for all scripted shows and pulled 12.4M viewers and doubled its audience from season 3.

Would not be shocked to see a $100M+ movie western. We've only seen 2 westerns do $100M+ in the last 29 years (True Grit and Django).

We saw a flood of them in the early 90s so its due for a comeback (Dances With Wolves, Maverick, and Unforgiven all made $100M+ while we also saw mid sized hits like City Slickers I and II, Legends of the Fall, and Tombstone).

There is also the Mandalorian as a clear western/samurai homage, I think you can call the Last of Us as kind of a zombie western as well. Pedro Pascal probably will get some movie westerns soon (he has a gay Western with director Pedro and Hawke listed on imdb but it's a short apparently)

Great point! It plays like a western but SW seems to cover a lot of genres. I usually have put it under scifi.

The historical drama seems to be going into high gear. Apparently there are THREE gladiator movies / TV shows in the works with high profile talent behind them.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movie ... 235357596/

I thought about this thread as I left the Mario Brothers showing. A decade ago, I would not have guessed Mario and other beloved videogame IPs would or could be 'the next boxoffice craze' even though it was staring me right in the face. I can see us saying several years from now, looking back, "ohhh, why didn't I see that coming"

Well #1 is all but certain. Studios will be looking at video game IP like toys and comics before it on TV and movies.

After having no $100M+ animated movies in 2021, and 2 doing $120M+ in 2022 (Minions 2 and Puss), 2023 is going to be a year of animated movies back with a vengeance.

Mario ($400M+), Puss ($130M+ grossed in 2023), Spiderverse 2 ($250M+), Elemental ($200M+), Ruby Gillam ($50M+), TMNT ($150M+), Paw Patrol ($40M+), Trolls ($100M+), Wish ($100M+) and Migration ($100M+).

That's $1.5B+ right there but some of these like Spiderverse could be monstrous to push these collectively to $2B for the year.

What TGM did for older adults coming back to the cinemas, Minions, Puss and especially Mario will bring families back in droves who mostly watched movies at home. Will be a banner year for animation.

I wonder how Nintendo handles this going forward. We've all fantasy booked a Super Smash Bros franchise, and it would be awesome, but one could argue that the reason Mario is doing so well is that it is not part of a connected universe. At least in 2023, audiences seem to be rejecting these bloated franchises that require many hours of homework to keep up with (as evidenced by Ant-Man's drops, Shazam's flopping and The Mandalorian's declining ratings. ) Maybe it'd be better to just shove Star Fox, Samus, Kirby, etc... into SMB2, 3 and beyond?

Illumination: Mario Bros 2 and 3, DK, Kirby, Banjo, Pokemon + Smash Bros including a few new characters who didn't get movies like Ness and Falcon
Spiderverse/Puss in Boots animated style: Starfox
Peter Jackson: Zelda
Guillermo Del Toro: Metroid (mixed WOM with passionate fanbase)

They’ll treat it like the Sonic movies. Just sequels and spin-offs. Don’t need all of them to connect story wise. Keep it simple like movies in the 90’s & 00’s

SMB
SMB 2….
Donkey Kong spin-off movie
Super Smash Bros…
Zelda
Zelda 2…
Metroid…
Mega Man…

I can see Smash Brothers serving as the connective tissue, perhaps as an assemble flick for all the standalones.

Metroid, Star Fox, Zelda - I can’t wait to see their live action films! What Nintendo has above the other videogame companies is its IP. Shigeru Miyamoto is about to be a much richer man. I just ask that they take their time with the writing/development. Do it right.

And shamelessly fan service the heck out of the films. The more Easter eggs the better (I almost teared up when I saw the karts and Rainbow Road in the Mario Bros movie….we played N64 incessantly in college)

The big question I imagine for Nintendo will be if they keep all their adaptations animated (which would make it easy to do an Avengers style Super Smash Bros crossover) or if they adapt some live-action.

I could see Star Fox and a Donkey Kong solo spin-off as animated adaptations.

Zelda and Metroid seem like no-brainers for live-action. Zelda can easily be an epic LOTR/Narnia style fantasy epic, and Metroid could be like Tomb Raider in space.

Mattel and Hasbro had a cool announcement today. They are going to pair up with each other's IP and tie into their theatrical movies like Barbie and Transformers.

For instance, they'll release the first ever Barbie version of Monopoly, Transformers-branded UNO games, and Transformers-branded Hot Wheels vehicles which will all debut over the next 12 months.

I like the possibilities here. They start with toys but I think there is a compelling angle having toy crossovers in movies, TV and media. Almost like a "toy avengers" assembling.

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/busin ... 235400116/