A Dull December Slate? Not Thanks to Specialty Programming!

While we may not have seen box office-breaking numbers from the first few weeks of December, we’ve certainly seen a pumping and robust slate that has managed to keep audience interest piqued and ticket sales ticking over steadily. And that was about the last thing anyone predicted for this traditionally dull time in the box office calendar. Whether or not we eventually hit the coveted $9B mark for the 2023 box office, there’s a valuable lesson on offer from this month. Specialty and indie theatrical releases should not be the afterthought they have been in previous years- in fact, they may be exactly what the theatrical audience is looking for! Blake & Wang P.A. entertainment attorney Los Angeles, Brandon Blake, analyzes this unexpected, but exciting, new trend.

                                            Brandon Blake

A Lesson of Scale

If you were asked to predict the top films for any box office in December, would a homage to Japanese cinema have even been on the list? We thought not. And yet the strong successes of Godzilla Minus One and Hayao Miyazaki’s The Boy and the Heron over the last few weeks speak for themselves. 

Heron opened this week in the Number 1 spot, while Godzilla slipped to a highly respectable third place in its second week. Both distributors showed smart planning in picking low-traffic, blockbuster-free release dates offering less competition. We’ve also seen specialized releases perform strongly, with Poor Things, Origin, and Anselem all doing well. Add Renaissance: A Film by Beyoncé as another unusual contender outperforming expectations, and you have a fascinating (and diverse) film slate holding fort at the box office where the lack of blockbusters was ‘guaranteed’ to bring doom.

And a Lesson from Audiences

Some may rush to point out that $71M isn’t a staggering box office total in itself- but compare that to last year’s paltry $38M and a different picture emerges. One that may even manage to squeeze that hoped-for $9B out of the box office kitty still, if the Christmas releases hold strong. Wonka is already doing its share of the heavy lifting, too, with a commendable $43M overseas opening.

Disney will no doubt be happy to see Searchlight (Poor Things) performing well, given some dismal recent releases from its core brands. But the real question is whether the wider entertainment landscape is paying attention to the lessons being learned. Yes, one box office tentpole or blockbuster can push up those numbers- but so can a more varied, smaller-scale slate with broad-based audience appeal, and those don’t need to come with the hefty price tags of the blockbusters to recoup, either.

2023 has shown us again and again that audiences still see the cinema experience as a fun and worthy way to blow some entertainment bucks. And that what they’re interested in is fresh takes, variety, and a well-populated slate of offerings. Tentpoles and mega-releases are entirely optional. Let’s hope we take these lessons into a 2024 where indie, specialized, and ‘odd’ releases are seen as the cornerstones of a thriving box office they truly are, instead of afterthoughts to big-ticket releases.