Is the Movie Dying?

Frazier, Staff Writer

Over the course of the last two centuries, the movie franchise has developed exponentially. The inaugural film, “The Horse in Motion” premiered in Paris, France in 1895 after being captured on black and white film strips. Since then, industry technology has advanced to our current platforms such as CGI and 3D coding. Along with production, film consumption has evolved accordingly. With the rise of streaming platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime, and Disney+, at home movie watching has become increasingly accessible.

Post pandemic, the movie industry has experienced a decline in high grossing films that aren’t sequels or franchise films. This trend has been encouraged by the accessibility of movies from the comfort of your own home, and the lasting fear of crowds and enclosed spaces following the pandemic.

In a report from IMDb, the highest grossing movie pre-pandemic was Avengers: Endgame which had a total gross of $11,892,160,011, while in 2022 the highest grossing movie of the time was Top Gun: Maverick which had a total gross of 7,368,808,746 (IMDbPro). A loss of over $4,000,000,000 is an extremely significant decline in the amount of money made off of box office sales. It should also be noted that both of these high grossing movies are a part of a previous movie adaptation and or sequel, which begs the question of whether or not people are going to see these movies entirely for the continuation of a specific series. In fact, according to IMDb, for the last decade the number one grossing movies have all been a part of a continuation of a previous series. This trend continues this year where the current top selling movie is Top Gun: Maverick, a continuation of the Top Gun series.

People are more often than not returning to movie theaters to see continuations of movies from the past, rather than going to watch a stand alone movie. In a response based poll from the Upper school students at Holy Innocents’, of the 219 responses we received a majority of the participants expressed that they last went to the movies to see a series continuation.