‘Barbenheimer’ makes waves for July’s movie spending,
The summer box office hit “Barbemicnheimer” probably contributed to the return of US moviegoers last month, but post-pande moviegoing still lags behind other leisure activity expenditure categories.
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In July, movie expenditure increased at an annualized pace of around 11%, topping increases in spending on athletic events, concerts, and live theater, according to Commerce Department statistics released Thursday. Last month, overall consumer expenditure climbed by a stronger-than-anticipated 0.8%.With “Barbie” by Warner Bros. and “Oppenheimer” by Universal being released simultaneously and being promoted as an unexpected double feature, ticket sales skyrocketed and have since defied the typical end-of-summer drop. According to Oxford Economics analysts, while this was great for long-suffering box office earnings, it had less of an impact on overall consumer spending when compared to other important categories like clothes and home goods.
Leading US economist Michael Pearce claims that the effects of “Barbenheimer” “appears to have had only a limited direct impact on spending last month, with the outsized $700 million annualized, or 11% increase in real spending at movie theaters only accounting for a small part of July’s gain.”
However, at least temporarily, it had a significant effect on live event spending.
July saw a significant increase in movie theater spending to more over $10 billion annually, up from just under $9 billion in June. This increase was the main contributor to the month’s 1.9% increase in live event expenditure. According to analytics company Box Office Mojo, this summer’s box office has been exceptional, with season ticket purchases up $500 million over last summer’s sales.
How long that momentum will remain is questionable due to the continuing writer and performer strikes, which have cast a shadow over the future of the pipeline of new releases.
While other areas of live-event spending have essentially recovered from the impact taken by pandemic shutdowns, film attendance expenditures are still about 65% of what they were pre-COVID.
