The Biggest Box Office Takeaways Of 2022

The 2022 box office is set to clear $7 billion before the year is over and what an unsteady time it's been for studios, moviegoers, and film geeks alike. On the one hand, the 2022 domestic box office was fraught with rocky elements and there was rarely a moment where everything was going smoothly. Problems like a lack of major new releases from studios like Warner Bros. and Lionsgate or bungled release strategies undercut the box office potential of the year. While 2022's North American haul is set to be a little more than 50% ahead of the 2021 yearly box office gross in the same territory, the market is still drastically down from pre-pandemic levels.

Still, there were a lot of encouraging highs this year, including just how popular some of the biggest hits of 2022 became. "Top Gun: Maverick" turned into a pop culture phenomenon and the biggest box office hit in Tom Cruise's legendary career, while titles like "Elvis" and "Everything Everywhere All at Once" provided hope that a wide variety of films can still excel. The biggest takeaways from the 2022 domestic box office make the problems still plaguing theatrical movies apparent. However, they also signal the accomplishments of the year as well, with those feats being remarkable enough to inspire some confidence in the box office hauls of future years.

Before March 2020, Disney's animated works were rocking and rolling at the global box office. Between 2016 and 2019, Disney released nine major animated titles and all but one of them ("Cars 3" being the lone exception) exceeded $795 million worldwide, with many of them soaring past the coveted $1 billion mark. Cut to 2022, though, and Disney's animated wares are far less in demand for family moviegoers. "Lightyear" bombed following its release in June with a worldwide total that failed to clear $220 million. That was positively glorious compared to the box office run of "Strange World," which looks poised to lose $100 million for Disney, making both films some of the biggest movie flops of 2022.

How did Disney go from king to pauper in the world of animated family features?  The Hollywood Reporter suggests brand confusion and politics came into play particularly in regards to "Lightyear," while Disney's decision to put titles like "Soul" and "Turning Red" on streaming, meanwhile, likely helped dilute the specialness of its movies on the big screen. 

It's an especially fascinating turn of events given that Universal's animated works like "Minions: The Rise of Gru" are hitting new box office highs for Illumination features. Kids and their parents are still going to the movies ... Disney will just need to figure out how to get them to see its future animated titles on the big screen in greater numbers than the turnout for "Lightyear" and "Strange World."

July 2022 was a watershed moment for the domestic box office. It was easily the biggest in terms of North American box office gross for a single month since the pandemic started and the first post-February 2020 month to crack $1 billion in this territory. A slew of hits occupying varying genres aimed at different audiences kept movie theaters buzzing. Unfortunately, the following few months returned to dire numbers. While months like September and October typically make less than July in an average year, there's not usually this sharp of a drop-off.

After July 2022 grossed $1.1 billion, August only made $466.9 million while September was the nadir of the year with just $323.1 million. These box office lows can be chalked up to Hollywood failing to deliver new exciting titles theatrically, with much of September 2022 being an utter ghost town save for a handful of titles like "Barbarian." If Hollywood wants the box office to reach pre-pandemic normal, then more major titles need to be produced and scattered around the calendar. Even November 2022 came in behind most other box office hauls for that month because studios refused to schedule a full slate of releases for the month (only one major new wide release dropped the first weekend of November). A more robust and packed calendar of theatrical titles will help avoid severe drop-offs like the one the domestic box office faced after the glories of July 2022.

It's hard to determine what is and isn't successful with the peculiar one-week release of "Glass Onion: A Knives Out Mystery" just because of its unprecedented nature. Still, the projected $15 million haul of the movie over just seven days of release certainly looks solid, especially given that the project never played in over 696 theaters. The significance of this movie's box office run came entirely from its distributor, Netflix. The streamer has been notoriously reluctant about engaging in normal theatrical runs for its movies, but "Glass Onion" marked the first time it gave a splashy big-screen run for one of its titles in movie theater chains like AMC.

The strong box office numbers for "Glass Onion" are a great case for demonstrating how audiences will show up for Netflix movies in theaters so long as the features are marketed well and playing on screens near them. It's a big foot forward in Netflix's relationship with movie theaters, but head figures at the streamer have made it clear that Netflix "are not trying to build a theatrical business." Future yearly box office hauls would greatly benefit from Netflix expanding on the success of "Glass Onion" with longer and wider theatrical releases. Sadly, right now, that doesn't look to be in the cards.

Before 2021, only four out of the then-23 Marvel Cinematic Universe movies had dropped over 60% in North America in their second weekends of release. This impressive feat, accomplished despite so many of this franchise's installments opening to massive $200+ million opening weekends, signaled the kind of positive word-of-mouth a typical Marvel Studios title generated. Fast forward to 2022, though, and those second-weekend drops are becoming routinely more and more sizable. "Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness" plummeted 67% in its second week of release while "Thor: Love and Thunder" had a slightly worse hold by dropping off a steep 68% in its second weekend. Even "Black Panther: Wakanda Forever" dropped 63%, a larger second-weekend decline than any pre-2021 Marvel Studios title.

Granted, these three Marvel Cinematic Universe titles still made over $1.151 billion for the domestic box office marketplace in 2022, so it's doubtful theater owners are sobbing over these declines. Still, the significantly frontloaded nature of Marvel Studios projects indicates that the audience for these films is narrowing. Once the core fanbase shows up on the opening weekend, the appeal of these blockbusters lessens significantly. Marvel movies can still pull in heaps of cash, but it's also clear these individual titles are way more frontloaded and function less as long-term box office juggernauts compared to entries in this franchise released before the pandemic.

Typically, each year brings one major wide release that defies all expectations and sticks around at the box office for months on end. In 2017, it was "The Greatest Showman," while in 2009, it was "The Blind Side." Shockingly, 2022 had multiple instances of movies sticking around way longer than expected in their respective North American box office runs. A great example of this was "Everything Everywhere All at Once," which only experienced a single weekend-to-weekend drop of over 21% in its first nine weeks of wide release. Then there was "Top Gun: Maverick," which defied the odds for how a summer blockbuster sequel should perform and just kept playing and playing all summer long with staggeringly impressive weekend-to-weekend holds, including a tiny 29% second-weekend decline. 

Though not as extreme in their box office stamina as those titles, other 2022 features like "Elvis," "Minions: The Rise of Gru," and "Smile" also held incredibly well for months on end. Part of this comes down to the simple fact that these were all popular movies, but it also didn't hurt that 2022 featured a lot of weekends totally vacant of new releases. Without a lot of competition to face, these movies could stick around in theaters way longer. This made it possible for events that would be unthinkable in any other box office year, like "Top Gun: Maverick" topping the Labor Day weekend frame after opening over Memorial Day weekend.

Did anyone have much in the way of box office expectations for "Terrifier 2," if they even knew it existed, at the start of 2022? Dropping in theaters the first weekend of October, "Terrifier 2" did decent, but not extraordinary business, on opening weekend (it didn't even crack $1,000 for its per-theater average that frame). But then "Terrifier 2" just kept making more and more money each weekend. The tales of audience members fainting or throwing up at the movie's gruesome violence gave it the kind of hype money can't buy. Soon, it cracked $10 million domestically. Here was a smash hit that grew out of good old-fashioned audience word of mouth, with "Terrifier 2" serving as one of several welcome surprise hits in 2022.

Similarly, "Barbarian" leaped out of the shadows without a recognizable brand name or iconic director to become a leggy box office hit, while "The Chosen Season 3: Episodes 1 & 2" turned out to be a bigger hit in North America than much costlier original feature films from 2022 like "The 355" and "Firestarter." It's always good to see surprise box office hits spring out of nowhere, but it's especially welcoming in 2022, where it can sometimes feel like only the biggest brand names can thrive at the box office anymore. If "Terrifier 2" proved anything, though, it's that the big screen can still be home to some box office surprises you never see coming.

Before 2022, Paramount Pictures had experienced years of hardship. From 2012 to 2021, the studio only exceeded $1 billion in its yearly North American box office gross once (in 2014) and accumulated merely $525.9 million in 2017, its lowest annual haul in the 21st-century pre-pandemic. Paramount Pictures wasn't just a place full of box office duds, it was a studio so quiet in its box office presence that it was easy to forget about it altogether. But something strange happened in 2022. Paramount Pictures didn't just bounce back, it had a comeback year for the ages that's bound to become the thing of Hollywood legend.

With $1.295 billion as of this writing, the 2022 haul of Paramount Pictures was enormous and more than doubled its $563.9 million yearly takings in 2019. A lot of that could be laid at the feet of "Top Gun: Maverick" soaring high above all expectations, but what made Paramount's 2022 so impressive was that it wasn't just Tom Cruise raking in the dough. "Sonic the Hedgehog 2" turned into a massive hit, "The Lost City" exceeded $100 million domestically, "Scream" and "Jackass Forever" reaffirmed the financial validity of some long-running franchises, and "Smile" became the second-biggest horror hit of the year. Much like Universal Pictures, Paramount Pictures offered a variety of movies in 2022 and that range paid off divinely for the once-troubled studio.

As late as 2011, the romantic comedy could still be expected to bring in over $600 million a year to the domestic box office. However, in the ensuing decade, Hollywood largely gave up on the genre as a big-screen entity, with streaming opting to take the reins on this genre. While the romantic comedy didn't suddenly turn the clock back to 1999 in terms of box office prowess, there were quite a few successes this year. It helped that titans of the genre, like Sandra Bullock, George Clooney, and Julia Roberts, all came back to headline new entries in the world of romantic comedies, thus giving audiences a chance to remember why they fell in love with box office hits like "The Proposal" in the first place.

Granted, the romantic comedy was far from foolproof this year thanks to the lackluster domestic box office performances of "Bros" and "Marry Me." Still, seeing "The Lost City" and "Ticket to Paradise" excel financially in North America did provide a reminder that the romantic comedy could still draw in a big crowd at movie theaters. It's doubtful we'll ever see the romantic comedy return to 2011 levels of box prowess, but 2022 demonstrated that the genre should not be counted out yet.

In the history of major American movies, there have been eras where general moviegoers were more open to darker entertainment. In the early 1970s, for instance, dark counter-cultural movies began to dominate the mainstream box office and allowed grim films like "The Godfather" to rake in a lot of dough. In the mid-2000s, in response to both the public consciousness after 9/11 and the success of projects like "Batman Begins," darker motion pictures once again began to creep their way to the top of the box office charts. Generally, though, audiences have often been enamored with lighter, unchallenging fare that offers escapism rather than reflections of brutal reality. As early as 1950, two of the three biggest movies at the yearly domestic box office were the animated kid's musical "Cinderella" and the upbeat comedy "Father of the Bride." 

It's easy to imagine a world where the horrors of the COVID-19 pandemic helped push moviegoers toward embracing darker movies again. However, the biggest movies in 2022 were all very light-hearted productions. "Top Gun: Maverick" soared above the competition with its incredibly cheery depiction of Navy aviators while even "The Batman" closed out its grim story of a young Bruce Wayne with a sense of hope. It's far from unprecedented for the biggest box office performers to be bright or colorful, but the dominant films at the 2022 box office painted a clear picture of what movies audiences showed up for in a world rocked by COVID.