As we near the end of the summer box office, the numbers are not as bleak as they seemed in May. Disney’s Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine can claim most of the credit for this end-of-summer turnaround. Meanwhile, over at Paramount, it seems Edgar Bronfman Jr. was not ready to play ball. The rag-tag group assembled by the billionaire was not able to offer a solid deal to counter Skydance. Is Ellison’s acquisition of Paramount finally in the clear? And finally, though the Venice Film Festival usually marks the celebration of festival season, Italy’s Prime Minister has other plans. Kim Masters and Matt Belloni shed light on a fall season’s greeting.
How successful was the summer box office? Though the box office was down 19-20% from 2023, the summer box office numbers still fared better than the years prior. Despite the lackluster business done by The Fall Guy and Furiosa, Disney came to the rescue with superheroes and sequels. “People complain about superhero movies and they complain about sequels, and yet the two champions are those things: Deadpool and Inside Out,” says Masters. Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine brought in $1.6 billion and $1.2 billion respectively, proving execution is key. And other franchises — Alien and Planet of the Apes — were also successful. The bleak beginning of the summer movie season seems like a fever dream now.
Is the ‘weird’ Bronfman deal already over? The strange and brief run of the Bronfman bid was just that: weird. The counteroffer to acquire Paramount brought in a number of players including Brock Pierce. But, when push came to shove, the Bronfman group was not able to give a concrete offer to the board. “He had a lot of people that had expressed interest, and some of the money was likely real. I think there [were] some problems with that money, namely that a lot of it was coming from foreign sources,” says Belloni. It seems David Ellison and Skydance are finally in the clear to close the Paramount deal.
Will the film industry withstand Italy’s fascist leader? The Venice Film Festival marks the beginning of festival season, but Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni is looking to take control of the cultural institutions, including film. Meloni’s government wanted to take over the management of Rome’s oldest film schools to monitor political content last summer. This prompted a petition against the act by filmmakers like Luca Guadagnino and Matteo Garrone. At a time of a global arms race to land productions, “if Italy is going to hamper itself by having a fascist and anti-free speech leader while trying to court these productions, it’s not a great look,” says Belloni.