As 2020 is nearing its end, movie studios and theaters have had months to cope with the harsh reality of seeing box office revenue in the United States plummet nearly 75% when compared to previous years. With only Wonder Woman 1984 and Monster Hunter left standing for a muted Christmas Day release, it seems proper to take a look at just how bad this year was for movies in the U.S. and exactly which films benefited in that dire landscape.
The first trimester saw the top five films of 2020 bag almost $500m in box office sales, as Bad Boys for Life ($204m), Sonic The Hedgehog ($204m), Birds of Prey ($204m), Dolittle ($204m) and The Invisible ($204m); not bad, but even with those numbers Birds of Prey and Dolittle failed to break even, and that’s the bright side of things.
Moviemaking is a business that like most enterprises sticks to Pareto’s distribution of income, where roughly the top 20% percent of films are responsible for generating at least 80% of the revenue, and this was more true in 2020 than any other year. Adding up the top 20 films this year still leaves them short of the $1 billion mark that was easily surpassed by last year’s top two earners: Avengers: Endgame ($858m) and The Lion King ($543m).
In fact, overall, only 57 films have managed to break $1m in box office revenue in 2020, a grim comparison to last year when over 200 movies did so. Now, does that mean 2020 was a complete failure for everyone who dared to have their movie screened in theaters?
Well, it really depends on who you ask. While films like Tenet and The New Mutants commanded the biggest box office numbers, they still underperformed well below their budgets and expectations, hence why practically the rest of 2020’s movie schedule was delayed; yet, films with more modest budgets don’t really have to worry about either of those.
Thus, enter low budget horror and the summer’s biggest success story, The Wretched. Produced on a $66,000 budget, The Wretched brought home a whopping $1.8m in the U.S. and $4.3m worldwide for a 6,415% return in the middle of a worldwide pandemic, making it one of the most profitable movies of all time, along other horror classics like The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Halloween, and Friday the 13th.
Horror films tend to be made on small budgets and are known as the ultimate gambles given the huge upside margin, they're were also perfect for drive-in theaters, so it’s no surprise to find the likes of The Rental, Becky and Australian horror drama Relic among the best performers, with Vince Vaughn’s Freaky, and Russell Crowe’s Unhinged also doing respectably well, considering the circumstances.
However, aside from these and a few other exceptions, the sad outcome is that most movies released in the U.S. that lacked any type of promotion or appeal abroad probably lost their studios money. There might be some more revenue to add when accounting for streaming, but there’s very little information available on that even from Disney’s Mulan.
Outside of the United States the story is quite different, since not only a movie like Tenet made most of its money overseas, but especially in Asia things have been moving back to normal with Chinese and South Korean blockbusters are doing fairly well, or even Demon Slayer breaking box office records in Japan.
There’s no point in denying the U.S. and Hollywood are the trendsetters in all things movies and Western markets are still struggling to reopen fully due to safety concerns and a lack of convincing movie offerings. Hopefully Wonder Woman 1984 can come closer to its billion dollar potential and inject some much needed life to ailing theaters all over the world.