2023 in Film Part 1: The State of the Studios

And so another year in film is coming to an end and its been an interesting one to say the least.

It was a year that started off very strongly and then seemed to peak with the Barbenheimer craze in late July and since then it feels like it just spluttered along to the finish line like a bad engine in a car as many films struggled to find a large enough audience (my main cinema at one point scaled back their operating hours and sessions per day because it got so quiet it wasn’t worth opening all day long.)

One big reason for this was the dual strikes that crippled the industry from the beginning of May to mid November a near 7 month long period of stonewalling, drawn out negotiations, underhanded tactics, so called “last best offers” and then a deal being done between the studios and the writers and actors guilds that had to be done and could’ve been done before the American Labor Day weekend in late August/early September.

And while it had impacted the last 3 months of the movie year to some extent in terms of actors not being able to promote their films or productions being shut down or writers not being able to pitch new movies and/or TV shows to streamers and studios but I fear the full impact of the strikes will not be properly felt until sometime in 2024 when there is a near baron wasteland of new films and TV shows due to how long and unnecessarily dragged out the strikes became and the negotiations on new deals.

Which leads me to the State of the Studios, a list that I really enjoyed writing last year and decided to keep going from now on and last year Paramount was the clear winner while Universal and Sony/Columbia/Tristar had good or okay years while Roadshow, Warner Brothers and Disney still looked like they were struggling to bounce back post the Dark Times of the COVID Pandemic.

Well this year Roadshow isn’t on this list as they didn’t really make much of a dent in the marketplace and their one big film Force of Nature: The Dry 2 was the first film to be delayed due to the strikes (one of my other most anticipated films Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters was also delayed due to the strikes) so it didn’t get released and every indication was it would’ve been a huge hit for them which they need as they no longer have the financial pipeline of the Warner Brothers films to help them.

But as for the rest and oh boy the bottom of the pile is a classic case of how things can change in a single year.

5. Paramount:

One year your cock of the walk, the next your cock of nothing.

And that is precisely what has happened to Paramount in 2023 as they suffered from a combination of bad timing release wise and plain simple bad luck and bad management.

And the bad management side of things is on the Scream franchise where after having the biggest box office opening of the entire franchise with Scream 6 and that film showing that it didn’t need Neve Campbell to carry it forward they sat back and let Spyglass stab it to death by essentially firing Melissa Barrera because of views she shared regarding current events in the Middle East to letting Jenna Ortega go as well and Scream 6 really centred them as the leads of the series going forward and they were great.

Plus they had a good choice of director in Chris Landon who made Happy Death Day and Freaky 2 really fun horror films and now he’s gone, Paramount could and should have done more to keep this series afloat and now it lies on the floor with multiple stab wounds and blood on the executive suite floors.

As for bad luck well that befell both Dungeons and Dragons: Honor Among Thieves and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One 2 films that were pretty good and fun to watch but just got totally swept up in the storm of other films releasing around them, in the case of Dungeons and Dragons it was the one two punch of John Wick Chapter 4 and Super Mario Brothers 2 big hits that just totally caught the attention of the main audience that D&D was aiming for and when you only have so much ticket money to spend those 2 films got the priority.

As for Mission Impossible it not only had to deal with the gathering storm of Barbenheimer but also the strong dislike for Tom Cruise personally among an awful lot of people out there and while they might have bitten their tongue regarding him for Top Gun: Maverick last year they weren’t willing to do it this time and also that film had Christopher McQuarrie on his fourth film in a row in this series which is seeing him end up like his old colleague Bryan Singer when he was on the X-Men series but also it no longer was the lighter and more fun contrast of the darker Daniel Craig James Bond films so it had to stand on its own this time and its box office showed on all of those fronts.

As for bad timing well that goes to Transformers: Rise of the Beasts and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem 2 films that its easy to forget that Paramount put them out this year as they got caught up in the wash of a busy release schedule and the fullness of time, I kept forgetting that Transformers came out this year as it came out during a big June that had Spider-Man, The Flash, Elemental and Indiana Jones and was a brand that was clearly not as big as it once was though I had more fun with it than I thought I would.

As for TMNT well it felt like it didn’t really gain much traction and like Transformers posted decent enough numbers at the box office and only cost 70 million to make but I’m certain that Paramount was hoping for much better numbers box office wise for both films but when you’ve been burnt on bad films in a series often enough audences become wary especially when cost of living, inflation and interest rates are biting and biting hard as they are right now.

Hopefully Paramount can bounce back in 2024 but we’ll have to wait and see.

4. Walt Disney Pictures:

Oh how the mighty really have fallen.

Disney had a bad year last year but this year feels like it was zapped by the Emperor’s lightning from Return of the Jedi as they are clearly paying the price for a clear lack of vision across all fronts.

And to do this honestly feels like an autopsy as Disney’s year was that bad so lets done the medical mask, gloves and gown and dive right in.

Lucasfilm: This has to be first off the rank as Lucasfilm put out Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny this year a film that many fans were already apprehensive about due to the age of Harrison Ford and the reception to 2008’s Kingdom of the Plastic Prop-sorry-Crystal Skull but boy oh boy it somehow turned out worse then even I thought it would.

And first of that was James Mangold the director of the film and a very good director he is too which gave me some optimism he would deliver a fun adventure but instead he went from an asset to a liability as it felt like his more mature and sombre tone didn’t really work and felt like it was more geared towards the very old audience that did actually go and see the film.

And then the film itself gets so bogged down in endless chase scenes that it forgets to tell a good story with a good villain and that was really just Mads Mikkelsen essentially doing the same thing he’s done so often now that it’s becoming boring to watch and sometimes you can tell he isn’t really trying that much and then the finale really didn’t make a lot of sense and in all the worst ways that kind of story can do you just sit there asking questions about how it makes sense when it doesn’t.

Oh and this cost 300 million dollars to make and not once do I believe it cost that much to make as it just looks like it was shot on green screen stages and some sets, why did they even bother?

Marvel Studios: Wowsers talk about a disaster in the making.

First off there was Ant-Man and the Wasp Quantumania which was one of the worst films I saw this year and it deserved to flop (I’ll talk about why I hated it more in my Turkeys list in Part 2.)

Then there was the Marvels where it felt like all the chickens regarding the MCU came home to roost with this film and while it is unfortunate it happened here it did and increasingly it feels like that 2019 was not only the peak of the MCU as a franchise with Avengers: Endgame but also the peak of the superhero genre itself as with only a few exceptions most of the comic book based films have struggled at the box office.

In hindsight the MCU should have either come to a proper end with Infinity War and Endgame given that those 2 films wrap up the storylines and characters so well that like Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi it makes it very difficult to justify continuing on after those films or had taken a long break while the acquisition of 20th Century Fox was sorted out and the Fantastic Four and the X-Men could be properly integrated in the MCU.

But given how badly the MCU has botched the Kree and the Skrulls in the Captain Marvel films, the Celestials in Eternals and now the Multiverse and Kang I really don’t know how anyone can have faith they will do right by Fantastic Four and Mutants but all those nerds became so adamant that the Rights had to return to Marvel even if it meant destroying nearly a century of movie going tradition so you’ll forgive me if I decide not to shed any tears if the MCU gets those wrong as well.

Then there is the catastrophic failure of both Wish and Haunted Mansion, Wish was a dreadful film that I’ll talk about more in my Turkeys list but Haunted Mansion cost for some baffling reason 155 million dollars to make and it went nowhere at the box office.

And these budgets are insane, 200 million plus for Wish, Ant Man and the Marvels, 250 million dollars for the Little Mermaid a woeful underperformer which I’m certain Disney wanted to hit a billion dollars worldwide just as the live action remakes of Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin and the Lion King did while 300 million was spent on Indiana Jones, I’m sorry but given how fractured the movie going audience is now there is little to no justification for this recklessness regarding budgets and spending now and Disney has to change course.

But whether they can is another question as Bob Iger might have been the hero at one point his return to lead Disney at the end of last year has seen him this year live long enough to become the villain and I do not think that he is the man who should be leading Disney going forward and he risks becoming like the CEO of my beloved West Coast Eagles football club Trevor Nisbett where you simply stay too long in a leadership job and its time to move on but nor do I think that Nelson Peltz who has recently been seeking a seat on the board of Disney is the solution either.

No what Disney I feel needs is another Jeffrey Katzenberg who sure made bad decisions like cutting When Love is Gone from the Muppets Christmas Carol which was a colossal mistake but he was also someone that when he was put in charge of Disney Animation in the mid 80s helped to get it out of its rut and put the studio back on top again and he did that by being unafraid to ruffle the feathers of the artists who worked under him and cracking the whip when he needed to and out of that came great films.

But it wasn’t all doom and gloom for Disney this year as they had 2 good hits in Guardians of the Galaxy 3 and Elemental, Guardians was one of the few films this year that I had confidence in to do well regarded James Gunn and Co didn’t wet the bed in delivering a good finale for the series while Elemental was able to overcome a low opening weekend to leg out to nearly 500 million dollars worldwide due to good word of mouth.

Plus the studio celebrated its 100th anniversary wonderfully with the short Once Upon a Studio which as someone who loves Disney Animation made me feel emotional watching it and I can’t watch the end of it without wanting to cry so Disney had some wins this year but they really need to find some new leadership and fast if they want to get back on top.

3. Sony/Columbia/Tristar:

The little studio that could.

And indeed it did for while they didn’t have a great year they didn’t really embarrass themselves all that much either.

And first off the rack has to be Spider-Man Across the Spider-Verse which had very good reviews and showed that the years of the first film being on Netflix and finding an audience it didn’t really get in its cinema release in 2018 meant that they came out to the cinema this time for number 2 and it delivered I think a better film as it had not only the great animation but also Miles and Gwen were far better fleshed out as heroes as they got to be the core focus this time instead of the Spider-Gang in the first film and it really made a difference for me.

Also the way that Miles is handled in comparison to the other Spider-Men he meets was well done also as he wants to be the one that decides how HIS story plays out and he doesn’t feel bound by the rules and regulations of the Spider-Men and their backstory was very well realised and I’ll be keen to see where the third film takes this and the Spider-Verse story as a whole and I hope they end it well.

But alas S/C/T has only really had Spider-Man going for it since the early 2000s as a lot of their other films (Equalizer 3, Gran Turismo, Anyone But You, Napoleon, No Hard Feelings and 65.) either did okay numbers at the box office or didn’t do very well at all and they cannot keep relying on the Web Slinger to give them good numbers as their Spider-Verse without a Spider-Man live action films have been very hit and miss at the box office.

And that is unhealthy for a major studio like this one, its good that they haven’t embarrassed themselves but they can’t just keep chugging along in neutral like some sports teams tend to do, if they want to win the premiership and enjoy the fruits of great success they need to step up to the plate like Dom Sheed in the 2018 Grand Final and go for it because if they don’t they’ll end up near or at the bottom and nobody should want that.

Now for number 2 the runner up and wowsers once again because these guys were fifth last year, second last having gone through a brutal regime change and a lacklustre slate of films but for the silver medal come on down.

Warner Brothers:

Yes you read that right folks, Warner Brothers is Number 2 this year.

And how can that possibly be, well firstly they had the biggest movie of the year in Greta Gerwig’s Barbie which managed to overcome some messy trailers and questions about who the movie was really for (a question Gerwig herself was asked point blank when in Sydney earlier this year promoting the film.) to become a mammoth hit.

And it deserved to for while I didn’t love it as much as others did mainly because of script issues I had with the film, it was also a movie that was just fun to watch and in this grey and sombre world we live in sometimes light and fluffy pink coated fun is all we need and Barbie delivered that while encouraging us all to wear pink to our session of the film.

Secondly they had 3 solid horror hits in The Meg 2: The Trench, Evil Dead Rise and The Nun II (quiet dark quiet dark NUN II) which didn’t cost a huge amount to make but became very profitable for the studio which Horror has been the last few years for the industry as a whole.

And lastly they are ending the year on a strong note with Wonka and the Color Purple both of which have had good word of mouth and look set to have good legs in cinemas over the December/January period, say what you will about David Zaslav the new head of Warner Brothers but the one promise he made to reprioritise theatrical for movies is starting to pay off and 2024 looks to be another good year for WB with Furiosa: A Mad Max Story, Beetlejuice 2, Joker: Folie A Deux, Godzilla X Kong and Dune Part 2: Long Live the Fighters showing potential to be huge hits if they deliver the goods.

But it hasn’t been all ham and plaques for Zaslav and WB as they had some bad headlines this year as well.

First of those is delaying Dune Part 2 from its original November 2nd release date to March 1st 2024 instead of using it as a ticking clock to help get the strikes resolved so it could’ve come out this year instead of next but given how well Wonka is doing this could help that film when it finally does come out.

Second the decision to scrap Coyote Vs Acme a Looney Tunes film originally designed for their streaming service HBO Max (now called Max) has justifiably seen a big backlash against Zaslav himself and the studio as a whole even though the last 2 Looney Tunes films (Back in Action from 2003 and 2021’s Space Jam: A New Legacy) bombed at the box office it saw several filmmakers cancel meetings with Warner Brothers and led to an image being formed that WB doesn’t care about making films and will scrap them for tax purposes if they so desire, I get the need to make money but if you just want to do that go and run a hedge fund or a bedding company instead.

And lastly there is DC on Film which has been a complete and utter migraine for the studio this year from Shazam! Fury of the Gods performing badly to the Flash performing much worse than what the studio had hoped it would to Blue Beetle being caught up in all of this mess and now Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom not proving to have the Way of Water in its veins like last years Avatar sequel did.

Part of that was outside events whether it be Ezra Miller or James Gunn and Peter Safran rebooting DC on film from near complete scratch or just the quality of the films themselves not being that great or only being good at best, hopefully Gunn’s Superman: Legacy in 2025 can turn things around but if it doesn’t then WB should simply move on as this genre is rapidly dying out anyway save for a few characters and WB has shown with its successful slate this year that it can do just fine without the Superfriends saving the day.

And now we come to the winner and this was the more I thought about it a no brainer.

Universal:

Yup the CIC group has won 2 years in a row.

And Uni has deserved this win as they had a number of successful films and only a small handful of flops which were mainly their 2 Dracula films Renfield and Voyage of the Demeter and Fast X.

Now Fast X did make money for the most part but mainly in international markets and nowhere near enough to cover the mammoth 340 million dollar budget the film had which like Disney’s reckless spending is insanity especially given how fractured the audience is nowadays, Universal really needs to pull Vin Diesel and Co into line on the next film to keep the cost down big time as this series is starting to lose petrol from its audience especially in the US.

As for the Dracula films well that isn’t any huge surprise as they weren’t that great or I didn’t really want to see it in the case of Renfield and I think it shows that most audiences have little to no interest in any new Dracula films.

Now for the wins well first has to be Super Mario Brothers, the only other film besides Barbie to be a billion dollar plus film worldwide and though I can normally see why a film clicks the way it does I honestly couldn’t with this one as while I didn’t hate it I also didn’t really think it was all that much either but I guess this shows the hunger was there for a proper film version of those characters especially when Nintendo themselves is helping to steer the ship.

Second is Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer which was a 3 hour character drama and physics class at the same time and yet showed Nolan’s incredible appeal in cinemas as this made 955 million dollars worldwide and showed that Nolan is very much a brand unto himself nowadays and could virtually go to any studio he wants, get any amount of money he wants and make oodles of it for them back, whether he decides to stay at Universal or head back to his former home of Warner Brothers will be very interesting to watch in the year ahead.

And lastly the studio had some great horror hits in M3gan, Knock at the Cabin and Five Nights at Freddys which were modestly budgeted and made a lot of money for the studio while Cocaine Bear did better than expected in cinemas and all of this is why Universal won top spot on the podium in terms of the studios in 2023.

But who will win in 2024?

Can WB finally take top spot?

Can Universal hold it?

Will Disney bounce back?

Can Paramount even survive?

Will Sony/Columbia/Tristar get their rear horse into gear and use lady Columbia’s torch to light a fire on its backside and get into the ring properly?

We’ll have to wait and see what happens and it will be fascinating to see what does happen.