Spider-Man swung, Odysseus sailed, and Hollywood rode them to its biggest summer box office ever. There was just one thing missing: nearly 249 million ticket sales.
Theaters across the U.S. and Canada generated $4.765 billion between May 1 and Labor Day, surpassing the all-time record set in 2013 by just $9.3 million, according to data from box-office analytics firm Rentrak, sent to Fortune. But rising ticket prices helped create that apparent comeback. Adjusted for inflation, this summer’s box office remained 17% below 2019, according to the New York Times, while cinemas sold nearly 249 million fewer tickets through mid-August than during the same period that year.
Not everyone thinks 2019 is the right yardstick. Paul Dergarabedian, the widely cited head of marketplace trends at Rentrak, told Fortune that he thinks the more instructive baseline is 2020, when theatrical attendance collapsed to nearly zero. A record-breaking summer in a “different era,” seven years on from the pre-pandemic times, in the midst of a streaming-saturated landscape, “speaks volumes to how important the movie theater experience is, culturally and financially.”
That gap points to Hollywood’s emerging post-pandemic business model. Higher prices and premium screenings are helping the industry make more money from fewer customers, masking how far attendance remains from a full recovery—and raising questions about whether a business built on $20 tickets and a handful of event films can last.
