Audiences are no longer satisfied just sitting on the couch to watch movies. Not only are they returning to movie theaters in droves, theater operators say they’re opting for pricier tickets and spending more on concessions.
Over the weekend, Disney’s newest Marvel Cinematic Universe film, “Thor: Love and Thunder,” opened to nearly $145 million in ticket sales domestically and around 10 million moviegoers.
With additional sales from movies like Paramount’s “Top Gun: Maverick,” Universal’s “Minions: The Rise of Gru” and “Jurassic World: Dominion” as well as Pixar’s “Lightyear” and Warner’s “Elvis,” the weekend’s domestic box office raked in around $240 million.
That’s well above the $185 million for the same weekend in 2019, according to data from Comscore.
With new blockbusters driving more people to theaters, the summer, box office season in the U.S. and Canada is down just 12% compared with the summer before the pandemic, Comscore said.
Between May 1 and July 10, the box office raked in $2.27 billion from tickets. That’s compared with $2.58 billion during the same period in 2019.
For the year so far, the domestic box office has collected more than $4.25 billion in ticket sales as of Sunday. That’s 30% below 2019 pre-pandemic levels.
