U.S. Box Office Hits $4.5 Billion in 2021, 60 Percent Behind 2019

Despite the best efforts of Spider-Man: No Way Home, which crossed $600 million in domestic box office this weekend as the new year began, 2021’s U.S. theatrical receipts remained far behind the industry’s last good year, back in 2019.

All told, domestic box office grosses hit $4.5 billion in 2021, about double 2020’s pandemic-crippled totals, but about 60 percent below the $11.4 billion of two years earlier.

The last time a “normal” box office plateaued at 2021’s level, it was 1992, 29 years ago, according to Comscore
SCOR
. The box office back then was led by Disney’s animated Aladdin, which grossed $217 million, roughly a third of Spidey’s holiday haul.

Flash forward nearly three decades, and 2021’s box office king was easily the latest Marvel/Sony entry in the Spider-Man universe. No Way Home crossed $600 million in domestic gross this past weekend, making it nearly one-seventh of all the ticket sales in United States and Canada for the year.

Worldwide, the movie has grossed $1.368 billion, making it the planet’s most successful film of 2021, according to BoxOfficeMojo.com. Comscore estimated worldwide box office, led by China’s thriving but increasingly insular market, reached nearly $21 billion.

The National Association of Theater Owners and Comscore both put a good face on the bad U.S. numbers, saying that adjusting for only the theaters that were open last year meant the drop from 2019 was only about 40 percent.

That’s likely minor consolation, perhaps, for a struggling industry trying to recover amid a lingering pandemic, omicron surge, and what appears to be permanent shifts both in viewing habits of many audience members and in distribution patterns by studios.

Consumer studies – and the box-office stiffs that were adult-skewing big-budget projects such as Nightmare Alley, Reminiscence, and West Side Story – suggest that a whole tranche of older viewers with no notable affection for princesses and spandex are staying away, perhaps for years to come.

And after 2021’s intriguing experiments in premium VOD and day-and-date streaming/theater releases, studios appear to settling toward post-pandemic strategies that include a theater-first approach for big “eight-quadrant” titles with wide appeal, followed by a rapid move directly to the in-house streaming service in 45 days (or less for underperformers).

And another set of films that once filled out the smaller rooms in multiscreen theaters now seem likely to head directly to streaming, skipping the cost and risk of marketing a movie the old-fashioned way. If they aren’t action, superhero or horror, and can’t attract younger males between 25 and 54, it’s likely studios will likely pursue other alternatives for distribution.

Indeed, 2021’s top four films were all Marvel-connected superhero movies from Sony and Disney: Spider-Man: No Way Home, Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings, Venom: Let There Be Carnage, and Black Widow. Disney also had another Marvel superhero pic in the top 10: Eternals at No. 6, and a non-superhero surprise hit, Free Guy, at No. 10.

Other Top 10 projects included F9: The Fast Saga (fifth overall), No Time to Die, A Quiet Place Part II, and Ghostbusters: Afterlife. Other than Spider-Man, the rest of the top 10 grossed less than $225 million apiece, in nearly all cases likely far less than their production and marketing budgets.

For the first time in the modern era, The Hollywood Reporter said, no animated title made the top 10.