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Source: The Hollywood Reporter
For some people, complaining about an underwhelming September box office is hardly any different than complaining about a cheap hamburger purchased from a local fast food restaurant. Sure, one would hope for something more satisfactory, but given the circumstances, one can’t be all that surprised by the results. Historically, September has been seen as something of a dumping ground for films that studios may not necessarily have the most faith in, especially compared to the high-profile summer blockbuster releases that come out just a few months prior. With people going back to school/work and not having nearly as much time to visit their local theater as they did during the summertime, most studios aren’t willing to risk putting out a super-expensive product, so most September releases usually consist of low-budget (if not low-quality) films that don’t need much to turn a profit and likely won’t have much of a long-term impact. It’s these conditions that have made September, alongside January, one of the least desirable times to release a film in theaters throughout much of recent cinema history.
Recent box office totals have only reinforced how unreliable September can be when it comes to selling tickets in large quantities. According to box office analyst website Comscore, theaters only accumulated a total of $328.7 million between September 1st and September 30th. Given the billions made by the likes of “Top Gun: Maverick” and “Jurassic World Dominion” during the summer film-going season, a drop-off of this scale was to be expected, but perhaps not to this significant of a degree. September may usually be the most lucrative time of the year for the box office, but no September – apart from that of 2020, when most theaters across the nation were still closed due to the COVID-19 pandemic – has seen a total monthly revenue this low since 1996, which earned a total of $326.7 million (and that’s before adjusting for inflation). In short, this most recent September was the lowest-grossing in over a quarter-century.
For comparison, the previous September of 2021 was able to accumulate a total domestic box office gross of around $367 million. However, there is a caveat to these numbers: last September had the advantage of a major blockbuster, Marvel’s superhero film “Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings”, being released during Labor Day weekend and driving a majority of ticket sales throughout the following weeks. Without that film, it’s almost certain that September 2021 would have made far less than what September 2022 ended up making without any major big-budget releases. With this in mind, it does prove that this is not a worst-case scenario, but it still doesn’t change the fact that for much of the film industry, these recent totals are nonetheless rather disappointing.
What is the cause behind these underwhelming numbers? The reasons should be clear by this point: there just weren’t enough high-profile releases to bring audiences into theaters, with Comscore chief box office analyst Paul Dergarbedian referring to this as the “drought after the feast” in reference to how lucrative the previous months had been. Granted, there were some titles that were able to exceed expectations at the box office, most notably Sony’s “The Woman King”, which was September’s top earner with around $40 million domestically. As impressive as that is though, the total still pales in comparison to films that had come out just a few months earlier, and few of the other September releases have been able to come anywhere close to earning that much revenue. Between the lack of any audience-grabbing titles and the supply chain issues Hollywood is still having to deal with due to the ongoing pandemic, it seems that a lackluster September, even by lackluster September standards, was inevitable.
If September has never been regarded as a particularly favorable time to release a film, why are studios still disappointed with these most recent totals? It might have something to do with the fact that, during the few years before the start of the pandemic, the September box office had actually seen a dramatic rise in ticket sales unlike anything they had seen before. Many cite the release of the horror film “It”, which first debuted in September 2017 and helped drive the total box office revenue of that month to $702.9 million, shattering the record at the time. Subsequent Septembers didn’t quite reach those heights, but they still brought in rather impressive amounts of revenue, with September 2018 earning around $670.8 million and September 2019 making approximately $698.2 million. Of course, those numbers plummeted the following year due to the pandemic, with September 2020 bringing in only $79.9 million, but until that point, no September had made less than $500 million in domestic ticket sales since 2005, which shows just how much the cinematic landscape has changed in terms of when to release a film to theaters.
Will the following Septembers be able to turn things around? It’s hard to say at this point, but Dergarbedian is rather optimistic given that there will in fact be quite a few high-profile releases set to come out during these times. “The good news is that September 2022 marks more of an anomaly than a trend,” Dergarbedian claims, “with September 2023 boasting The Equalizer 3, The Nun 2 and, of course, [in 2024] the next blockbuster installment of Deadpool”. These are just a few of the films currently announced for a September release, and it’s quite possible that even more highly anticipated films will come out during this time as well.
As for the remainder of the year, most studios are relatively hopeful that the films set to come out between October and December will bring masses back to theaters in large numbers. October will see a wide range of genres being represented by the month’s output, from the horror sequel “Halloween Ends” to the superhero blockbuster “Black Adam” and the romantic comedy “Ticket to Paradise”. November, meanwhile, will see the release of “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever”, the sequel to one of Marvel’s most popular superhero films to date, and a month later, “Avatar: The Way of Water”, the sequel to the current highest-grossing film of all time, will also come out. This recent September may have been less than satisfactory for the box office, but given what has already happened throughout the year and what is still expected to happen, it likely won’t matter too much when looking at 2022 as a whole.
