TJ Walker breaks down October's worst box office in 27 years. Fewer movies after strike delays, high ticket prices, and better streaming options all hurt theaters. He says the problem isn't cinema itself but a shortage of films worth leaving home for.
Questions this video answers
About $425 million.
The weakest October in 27 years (including 2020).
Tron: Ares — $63 million domestic.
$11 million domestic.
October 31, 2025.
Chapters
Box office massacre. No, that's not the name of a of a late big time Hollywood movie about some horror movie. No, that's what's actually happening in the box office. It's being massacred. Why October tanked and what it really means. According to the Hollywood Reporter, October's domestic box office is set to finish around $425 million, which may sound like a lot. It's the weakest October in 27 years, including 2020, believe it or not. It's hard to imagine. Pamela McClintock reports a perfect storm. Fewer releases after strike delays. Weak August and September carryover and fall event. Films that didn't really connect. Tron Arras leads the month at 63 million domestic and October leader low not seen since 2005. While Dwayne Johnson's the Smashing Machine sits at $11 million domestic sales analyst Eric Handler notes Mortal Kombat 2 being pushed to May created a hole. Comscore's Paul Dergabetian says the heat is now on November titles. Bridge to the holidays, Big picture. Grim month, yes, but media history says new formats usually erode old ones. They don't really erase them completely. Radio survived TV broadcast survived cable. Cable survives streaming. Shrunken but still anchored by live sports and news. Theaters aren't dead. They're starved for consistent, compelling supply. That, and there's some other issues. What's the real message behind all these box office bombs? Nobody going to movie theaters anymore. Part of it is the movie experience is awful. I hate going to movies because some jerk next to me wants to check his Facebook update right in the climax of the movie. That's a part of it. The other problem is TVs have gotten better and better and better and bigger and bigger and cheaper at home. Why go the time and expense to the movie theater when so many people have great home theaters? Okay, let's dig a little deeper here and look at some of the facts. The numbers are grim when it comes. It's not. Maybe not as grim as Broadway musicals, where 100% have lost money. New Broadway musicals in the last year. We're not quite at a point where 100% of movies are losing money, but we are seeing a tremendous contraction. That's not surprising. I mean, radio contracted when TV came out. When cable TV came out, broadcast TV lost some of its audience. When the Internet came out, cable TV and broadcast lost audience. So typically you see media build on each other, but not always. We don't see people sending a lot of telegrams anymore. We don't see People paying to send messages in Morse code anymore. So there are times we don't see vaudeville really either particular medium of expression. So there are times when a medium just becomes obsolete. Heck, he says part of the reason is high prices. Yes, movie movies are very high compared to what you can get at home. There's also the little known fact that you can now get any movie ever made at home on your cell phone, on your computer, on your big screen. There was an ad promoting the wondrous powers of the Internet. It was a broadband company. I don't even think it's around anymore. This ad came out 25 years ago and someone was checking into an old, dingy, dirty, cheap looking hotel motel, really? That was decrepit, the pool was nasty, and the person checking in was essentially saying, you know, no pool, no this, no that. But we have every single movie ever made available in your hotel room. And this blew people's minds. I remember thinking, wow, would we ever live in a fantasy world like that? Well, now it's just common sense because, yeah, everybody has access to every movie ever made. So if the issue is what am I going to do tomorrow night, a Saturday night, if I could go out to a movie, chances are there are cartoon movies and comic book movies that have no interest in me, to me. Or I could look at Godfather Part 2 or I could rewatch one of my favorite movies, the Sweet Smell of Success or A Face in the Crowd. I'd much rather watch one of the greatest movies ever, which I can now do with the push of a button. And many times if it's a streaming service, I'm not paying any extra money. And even if I do have to buy the movie on Amazon or Apple, I can often rent it for $3.95. That won't even pay for the parking, going to a movie theater. So yeah, I think the movies are in big, big trouble. And because of that, smart, creative people are not dashing out to Hollywood to do whatever it takes to be the assistant to the assistant director, to pay their dues for 10 years so they can eventually be an assistant director and may one movie by the time they're 50. They're not doing that. They're doing what Mr. Beast did, staying in their small town in North Carolina or Iowa or whatever. And they're taking creative storytelling abilities using video and they're creating it on YouTube, on TikTok, on Instagram. They're. That's the new movie world. I don't think that's going to change. So my real advice to you is if you are serious about your career, it's the old Wayne Gretzky line. You got to, you got to go where the puck is going. The puck is not going to more movie theaters. It's just not. It's so expensive. It's so hard to get a crowd in order to get people to even be aware of your movie and to get a babysitter or to make a date and to drive across town and park and go into a theater. These days, quite often you have to spend hundreds of millions of dollars of advertising to make that happen. Guess how much money Mr. B spends on advertising to get people to watch his videos? Hundreds of millions of times. He spends zero. Spends zero dollars. Much less costly and less risky. So if you are sincere about a career as a, as a creative voice, I would urge you, don't put all your eggs in the basket of being a feature filmmaker where your movies have to be seen on the big screen because the audiences aren't going, the cost structure is going up, there's more consolidation in the movie industry than ever. And at some point you're going to wake up one day after you perhaps were really successful and raised $50 million for your movie and finally you maybe get it out and you're going to go to the box office to see the results the next week and what you're going to find is some 17 year old made a completely AI generated movie about, you know, two candy bars fighting each other in a TikTok arena and that person will have made $100 million and you will have made nothing. And they spent zero creating their movie. I think that is the world we are headed in and it's just going to be tough. I mean, you can't get a comedy made anymore. Ben Stiller has talked about this. Will Ferrell has talked about the so called middle range movies that are not gigantic, Mission Impossible, car chase and blowing up and extreme things. If it's not a cartoon, a Marvel comic book thing, you're not going to get the movie made. So focus on what really matters, a creative vision. If it's video, great. But realize it doesn't have to necessarily be on a big screen. So always, always look at where's the technology going, where are the opportunities going, where's the growth? There is growth right here on YouTube. There is growth on, there is growth on podcasting platforms. We live in a world now where, as Scott Galloway has said, every podcast is becoming a TV show, every TV show is becoming a podcast. I'm attempting to be living proof of that, as my show starting Monday is going to be available on Roku TV sets, on Amazon Fire TV sets. So I'm looking forward to that and a new partnership with POD tv. So I'm in a field where it's expanding. Doesn't mean I'm ever going to be as big as James Cameron. But if James Cameron started out today, the big question is, would he even be able to get his first movie in the theaters? Now, that concludes our main section of the show today. But there's a lot more stuff in the news that I just. I have to talk about going to try to cover these relatively quickly.
