The prognosis was looking very grim for the theatrical industry for a while, with many insiders and analysts wondering if business would ever return to pre-pandemic levels, or if things had been drastically changed forever. While we’re not quite back to the glory days quite yet, there’s plenty of reason to celebrate.
As per Deadline, October has delivered the highest-grossing month domestically since January 2020, although revenue has been driven largely by four titles. Venom: Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die, Halloween Kills and Dune are responsible for 75% of the $638 million total, but that’s still impressive when you consider the latter two were given simultaneous streaming debuts.
The previous high came when Black Widow powered July to $582 million, and there’s reason to believe that October’s total could comfortably be bettered in the remaining two months of the year. Major titles including Eternals, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, Encanto, Spider-Man: No Way Home, The Matrix Resurrections, Sing 2 and The King’s Man are still to come, meaning we may be seeing another record in short order.
The last time we saw such a healthy month at the multiplex, it was Bad Boys for Life leading the charge, which feels as though it was playing on the big screen a lifetime ago, so new benchmarks are well overdue.