With theaters back open and people returning to the movies, we’re starting to get a more complete picture of the post-pandemic box office and what to expect as the industry continues to recover from coronavirus. Thanks to delays of almost every single major 2020 release, massive theater closures, and capacity restrictions, the 2020 box office took a massive hit, one from which the industry may never fully recover.
Even so, there’s been some major wins in the 2021 Summer box office, showing some encouraging signs, but also indicating what to expect from other big releases coming out in the near future. Since the industry saw such a massive drop, it’s not practical to compare post-pandemic box office performance to the already declining audience of the pre-pandemic box office, meaning the newest box office hits like A Quiet Place II, F9, and Black Widow exist in an entirely new context and behave in ways they wouldn’t have in the pre-pandemic market.
Things are sure to continue evolving for some time, but we have enough of a snapshot of the new normal to have an idea of what to expect for other upcoming releases, provided there’s no more major fluctuations in the near future. Ideally, the box office will continue to trend upwards, but A Quiet Place II, F9, and Black Widow provide enough of a foundation to establish a few expectations.
Post-Pandemic Movie Domestic Box Office Openings Are Way Down
![Comparing Black Widow, F9, and Quiet Place 2 Post Pandemic Box Office](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/F9-Fast-and-Furious-Box-Office.jpg)
Some of the findings are obvious, but just because it goes without saying doesn’t make it relevant, and that’s the fact that post-pandemic box office openings are significantly lower than they were before. A Quiet Place II is a little hard to compare because the original was a bit of a surprise hit, but the opening for the sequel was almost the same as A Quiet Place, coming in just a few million shy with $47,547,231 (but bumping it up over the original to $57,088,948 thanks to a 4-day Memorial Day weekend). A Quiet Place II‘s opening weekend box office is unique to this list since the longer holiday weekend made it the only movie of the three to outperform its predecessor in ticket sales during its opening week, but accounting for a typical sequel boost, it would have been expected to do much bigger numbers under pre-pandemic circumstances.
F9‘s box office performance is a more typical franchise sequel, so its $70,043,165 box office opening weekend is likely a bit more indicative of the kind of drop in opening weekend sales to expect. F9‘s opening weekend is the lowest opening for the franchise since the third installment, The Fast and the Furious: Toyko Drift, which is back before the Fast and the Furious franchise’s box office had the expectations its known for today. Fate of the Furious brought in $107,310,965 in its opening weekend.
The Marvel Cinematic Universe is known for its ability to turn almost any character into a major franchise of its own, and Black Widow has been a member of the Avengers from the beginning, so it’s fair to expect a big outing for her solo movie. Black Widow opened to $80,366,312, which is surprisingly not the lowest MCU opening in recent memory, since both Ant-Man movies opened lower than that; however, Ant-Man doesn’t have the same popularity as Black Widow, and you’d have to go all the way back to Phase 1 and Captain America: The First Avenger to find another MCU film with a lower opening weekend. Also impacting Black Widow‘s box office is the fact that it was available streaming on Disney+ Premiere Access, where it brought in another fair chunk. However, since we’re examining post-pandemic theatrical industry performance, not the revenue of each individual film, we can ignore the streaming revenue other than the fact that it may have cannibalized a percentage of ticket sales, but it’s not a guarantee that those sales would have all been recouped in theaters if Premiere Access weren’t an option. Besides, with early streaming releases becoming a part of the new normal, this is just one more example of factors impacting box office performance.
The Post Pandemic Box Office Has Big 2nd-Weekend Drops (But Maybe Good Legs Still?)
![Black Widow box office](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Black-Widow-box-office.jpg)
Movies aren’t only opening lower, they’re also dropping faster. Every post-pandemic movie mentioned above saw a second-weekend drop far bigger than its predecessors, despite strong reception for all three films. Before the pandemic, second-weekend drops were usually attributed to poor word-of-mouth, and that would certainly still be a factor if the movies weren’t reviewed well, but in this case, it likely represents a shrinking theater-going audience. Theater attendance has been declining for years prior to the pandemic, and 2020 may have been what it took to convince some fence-sitters to start staying home more.
A Quiet Place II performed the best in this area, only dropping 59 percent in its first weekend, which may not seem that bad by pre-pandemic standards, with around 60 percent being the typically expected drop for a summer movie, but considering the first A Quiet Place only saw a 34.4 percent drop, and the movies saw similarly positive reviews (with A Quiet Place 2 seeing only a little less enthusiastic reviews), the bulk of that drop can be blamed on the post-pandemic market. The first movie did release in April, which isn’t quite in range of the Summer’s expected 60 percent average, however, horror movies are also known for commonly seeing drops of 60 percent drop, a trend the first movie dodged, so it’s clear there’s a number of factors at play here, but all things considered, A Quiet Place II saw a relatively solid second-weekend drop and has actually seen even better performance proportionally in the weeks since.
Conversely, both F9 and Black Widow saw second-weekend drops just north of 67 percent. For F9’s box office the 67 percent drop is certainly the worst in the franchise, but surprisingly not by a lot. Most movies in the Fast and Furious franchise hover around 60 percent already, and the majority of those movies opened in April, just before the summer season’s heavier drops. Also, looking at the drop from week two-four for each movie in the franchise, F9‘s drop is far more comparable to the rest of the franchise, and even better than some of the other Fast films.
Black Widow is a bit of a different story. Marvel’s notoriously strong box office performance rarely sees a drop exceed 60 percent, only passing it on four occasions, The Incredible Hulk,
Captain America: The First Avenger, Spider-Man: Homecoming, and Ant-Man and the Wasp (with Spider-Man: Homecoming’s 62.2 percent box office drop marking an MCU pre-pandemic high point). The movie only just ended its second week in theaters, so we can’t compare past the second weekend just yet, but it’ll be curious to see if Black Widow‘s post-week-two performance is as strong relative to its predecessors as the other post-pandemic films we looked at.
How the Pandemic Impacted Summer Blockbusters So Far
![Box Office CHanges](https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2021/07/Box-Office-CHanges.jpg)
While the first two weeks have suffered a lot, with A Quiet Place II, F9, and Black Widow all seeing smaller openings and big second-weekend drops, the encouraging revelation here is how strong the post-week-two performance is for both A Quiet Place II and F9. This proves a higher level of elasticity with theater audiences than expected, and instead of staying home altogether, some of the audience has simply shifted to later weeks, giving the movies surprisingly strong legs (if the first two weeks are excluded). The interesting detail to watch throughout the box office’s continued recovery will be whether or not the post-week-two legs are strong across the board, or if A Quiet Place and F9 are outliers. Also, if those drops aren’t isolated, then as audiences continue to return to theaters, will those post-weekend-two drops increase as weekends one and two grow, meaning the audience is shifting to earlier weekends as they get more comfortable with the associated larger crowds, or will the post-pandemic box office simply see improved legs as mild compensation for lower openings?
There’s still a lot to learn about the impact of coronavirus on the theatrical movie box office. Audiences are definitely returning, just not in the same numbers quite yet, and it’s not clear how close they’ll ever get to pre-pandemic levels. The one silver lining, at least in the case of A Quiet Place II and F9, is that the performance of week three onward seems to have seen a boost, showing at least some audiences are willing to change their behavior to maintain their moviegoing habit instead of abandoning theaters entirely, which bodes well for the continued box office recovery.