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Movies Sci-Fi

2024's Ten Top-Grossing Films Were All Sequels or Prequels (slashfilm.com) 86

Posted by EditorDavid from the back-to-the-future dept.
"Every single one of the top ten box office hits of 2024 was a sequel, a remake... or a prequel," writes The Hollywood Reporter.

Here's the list of 2024's top-grossing films published by the movie blog SlashFilm:

10. Beetlejuice Beetlejuice
9. Venom: The Last Dance
8. Kung Fu Panda 4
7. Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire
6. Wicked
5. Dune: Part Two
4. Moana 2
3. Despicable Me 4
2. Deadpool & Wolverine
1. Inside Out 2


2024 was the year Godzilla celebrated its 70th year as a franchise — but it wasn't the only long-running franchise. "When the Marvel Cinematic Universe went R-rated with Deadpool & Wolverine... it was literally more successful than any other R-rated movie in history," SlashFilm points out, while Venom: The Last Dance was the year's 9th highest-earner. (But several other big superhero movies flopped and "the misses outweighed the hits this year, while DC sat it out entirely as the world waits for Superman to usher in James Gunn's new DC Universe.")

They also marvel that Wicked earned $572 million after opening on the same day as Ridley Scott's Gladiator II....

But in the end SlashFilm describes 2024 as "a banner year for animation," with computer-animated movies filling four of the top ten spots (Kung Fu Panda 4, Moana 2, Despicable Me 4, and Inside Out 2). And another interesting trend? Though the world flocked to Tim Burton's first sequel to Beetlejuice after 36 years, Warner Bros. was, "at one point, pushing for Beetlejuice 2 to go directly to streaming on Max." And Disney original had the same idea for Moana 2, leading SlashFilm to conclude that 2024's box office "should be the death of the big direct-to-streaming movie." SlashFilm notes that Disney also sent several Pixar originals to Disney+ between 2020 and 2022, which "did immeasurable damage to the brand, something that even CEO Bob Iger has acknowledged." And then after a theatrical debut Pixar's Inside Out 2 became "the eighth biggest movie ever at the box office, with $1.698 billion to its name" — and the highest-grossing animated film ever made.

And Dune: Part Two? Denis Villeneuve accomplished nothing shy of a miracle with 2021's "Dune," an adaptation of Frank Herbert's cherished sci-fi novel that was faithful to the material, massive in scale, but still felt like an auteur film... The only downside? 2021 was a terrible time to release a movie, particularly a Warner Bros. movie, as all of the studio's films were going to HBO Max the same day they hit theaters. Yet, "Dune" made $400 million in its original run, which was enough to justify a sequel. Evidently, the audience for this franchise grew exponentially in the years before "Dune: Part Two" hit theaters in early March... All told, Villeneuve's sweeping, epic sequel pulled in $714.4 million worldwide, all while garnering tons of acclaim once again. Also, not for nothing, Villeneuve got it made for less than $200 million...

Without "Dune: Part Two" making what it made, the box office might have been in truly dire shape. As a relatively dead April and very weak May followed, this overperformance helped keep theaters afloat until greener pastures arrived in the back half of the year. The Spice must flow, as it were.
The Hollywood Reporter offers another take on the significance of 2024: Total domestic box office revenue appears to be heading toward around $8 billion, down from 2023's exhilarating post-COVID turnaround of $9 billion, but the National Association of Theatre Owners prefers to accentuate the positive, attributing the dip to a shortage of product due to the labor strikes and taking encouragement from the renewal of the movie habit...

Interestingly, or thankfully, the cinematic universes of Marvel, DC, and Star Wars failed to expand: except for Deadpool & Wolverine, not one of the huge hits came from a comic book franchise or a galaxy far, far away.
The article then complains about people using their phones during the movie for texting, talking, and photographing the movie itself. (Though it applauds a PSA against the practice in which Deadpool and Wolverine "delivered the message in laudably blunt terms.")

And on Wikipedia, Deadpool & Wolverine and Dune: Part Two were the eighth and 23rd most popular articles of 2024.

2024's Ten Top-Grossing Films Were All Sequels or Prequels More | Reply

2024's Ten Top-Grossing Films Were All Sequels or Prequels

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  • Ahh so that's why... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by sarren1901 ( 5415506 ) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @07:24PM (#65048753)

    I haven't bothered to go see any movies this year. Maybe take a risk or two and come up with something different or interesting or at least something not already done at least twice.

    It doesn't help that I strongly dislike the theater experience and building your own home setup isn't really all that costly anymore.

    It helps to remember that new stuff like this is being made for the post 40 crowd anyway. We're to picky at this point. Just keep remaking shit every 15 years or so for the next generation of kids.

    • Exactly! My wife and I used to be avid movie goers, the pandemic just killed it for us. I remember seeing Tenet and wondering who the actual fuck mastered the audio so god damned badly. And since then, it's just been shit all the way. Now we have our own surround sound setup and it's superior.

      • I remember seeing Tenet and wondering who the actual fuck mastered the audio so god damned badly.

        My impression is that Christopher Nolan likes his movies loud.

        • It certainly was! The problem though is we couldn't make out what was being said half the time. It's as if there was an error made during mastering where the vocal track was attenuated. Neither in the cinema nor at home did it sound correct. I've not had the same issue with his other films, but nevertheless when I think back to when the cinema 'got shit', sadly Tenet marks the beginning.

          • The problem though is we couldn't make out what was being said half the time.

            I went to a Bob Dylan concert (way back) that was like that.

            It's as if there was an error made during mastering where the vocal track was attenuated.

            In my case, I think the problem may have been with Bob ... :-)

          • It turns out that Christopher Nolan likes it this way. It is not a mistake. It is an artistic decision. Now I think it is a dog ahit of a decision. But it is done on purpose.

            When he directed Batman, he sid not put a mic in Bame's mask to capture the authenticity that people would not be able to hear him right. So he is so hard to understand because he is not mic-ed properly on purpose.

            • Well here's the thing, I did not find it hard to hear Bane. The audio quality in all of his other films is absolutely superb, Batman included. Tenet is SO FAR off from those films that it genuinely feels like a mistake.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by tlhIngan ( 30335 )

          My impression is that Christopher Nolan likes his movies loud.

          It's more like he mixes things in a peculiar way. If you why you can't hear dialog, its because he intentionally mixed it that way. He also doesn't like surround sound - he believes all the action is on the screen, and thus all the sound comes from there (i.e., the fronts). There is basically no audio content on the surrounds - other than perhaps the music.

          • Maybe they should put subtitles on a screen, say in the back of the theater in case people can't hear what said? Judging from seeing the hearing test results at my last job, a lot of people have substantially reduced hearing

          • He also doesn't like surround sound - he believes all the action is on the screen, and thus all the sound comes from there (i.e., the fronts). There is basically no audio content on the surrounds - other than perhaps the music.

            Interesting. Almost like he doesn't actually understand how sound works. :-)

        • Looking at the list and excluding children movies, superhero movies and science-fiction there is only one movie left in the top 10.

          What's left in the top 50 movies if you exclude well-worn genres and the infinite pre/sequels?

          Well-worn genres:
          - children's films
          - superhero
          - prequel / sequel sci-fi, sci-fi remakes
          - prequel / sequel action films
          - the entire movie is a one long car chase (Mission Impossible)
          - courtroom drama
          - president is missing, nuclear weapon is missing, ....
          - rom-com
          - getting married
          - having

          • Selling movie tickets to international audiences:

            Simplify plot and storytelling
            - Clear and straightforward narratives
            - Universal themes
            - Linear storytelling

            Dialogue and language
            - Clear and direct dialogue
            - Avoid complex vocabulary and references
            - Simplified subtitles versus actual dialogue

            Overemphasis on visual storytelling
            - Visual and action oriented movies
            - Escapism and entertainment focus instead of intellectualism

            Simplification of themes
            - Relying on physical attributes, slapstick comedy
            - Excluding socia

      • Top movies are at the top because the audiences like them.

        So expect to see more sequels and prequels. That's what people pay to see.

        • Wouldn't it make sese to make more original films to make sequels and prequels off of? Or is that it, they would if they could? IMO Hollywood is losings its mojo.

    • Last time I went to a theater was the last Jason Bourne movie, 2016. Haven't been back since, as that was such an unpleasant experience - music too loud, too much spam before the movie, etc. (And I'm getting too old to sit through a movie without a r/r break!)

      And there's the old saying, "There's nothing new under the sun." Are there any original ideas even left? I get that studios need to make money and movie fans want something to see, but surely there are diminishing returns from pumping out the same ol

      • This is why you make movies for kids and young adults because for them, it's literally the first time they have seen the idea or concept and it is a new experience. As you say, are there really any original ideas even left. There are only a handful of story types as well, which means you really need to make the characters themselves interesting.

        The last Bourne movie was a huge let down after the first 3. I enjoyed all three of those.

    • Maybe take a risk or two and come up with something different or interesting or at least something not already done at least twice.

      This story does not say all or even most of the movies released were sequels (despite everybody interpreting it that way) - just that sequels are the ones audiences chose to pay to watch.

      You want to see a list with few sequels? Here you go: 10 Biggest Box-Office Flops of 2024, Ranked [fandomwire.com]. (How Megalopolis didn't make that list, I have no idea. But it wasn't a sequel!!)

      • I don't consider Dune a sequel, it's a part 2 like Kill Bill.

        • I would call that a sequel but not a 'remake.'

          Sometimes the boundary is fuzzy, I went into The Force Awakens expecting a sequel, but then it was more like a remake because all the same events happen point-by-point.

          • The Force Awakens (that's first new one, right?) was a painful verbatim of a remake of A New Hope. It didn't help that the villain was just so emo, where as Vader was a badass right from the start.

            TFA killed it for me in Star Wars. I still enjoy the first 6 but that's the only content I'll watch in that universe now.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by mpercy ( 1085347 )

          Indeed, Dune was basically a single 6 hour movie released in two parts. Dune Part 2 is not a sequel in any normal sense of the word, it's more like the 2nd episode of a 2-episode series.

    • You are looking for excuses. There's no reason a sequel or a prequel couldn't be any bit as good or maybe even better than an original film just because it is set in some universe in which you have heard a story told before.

      Not all new stuff is good
      Not all sequels / prequels / remakes are bad.

      • To the point: Deadpool & Wolverine might be the best xmen movie so far.

        • Really? I thought that it was awful, but then again you didn't set the bar high when you said best XMEN (I'm going to assume you meant Marvel) movie.

          • Nah, of course I meant xmen. I did not set the bar high. Xmen has plenty of potential, but the writers usually spend all their time introducing characters and never quite get to the plot. Then everyone is fighting for some reason.

            Deadpool & Wolverine is entirely based on Deadpool's comedy. If you like that humor, then you will like the movie. If you don't, then it won't. Also, if you take superhero movies too seriously, you might not like it since it makes fun of them.

        • To the point: Deadpool & Wolverine might be the best xmen movie so far.

          Might be? It left every other X Men movie in the absolute dust. Granted, I doubt Disney is smart enough to let actual fans of the properties get that deeply involved in creating other films in their ongoing universe, but that's how that movie came to be so good. It was clearly a love letter to the X Men, to Wolverine, to Deadpool, and to the entire comic book movie genre. The only negative hit against it is that it's going to make Disney Marvel's job a million times harder going forward. Every new comic boo

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Jeremi ( 14640 )

        There's no reason a sequel or a prequel couldn't be any bit as good or maybe even better than an original film just because it is set in some universe in which you have heard a story told before.

        It's certainly true that a sequel can be as good or better than the original; it's also true that that is the exception rather than the rule, and for an obvious reason: There are only a finite number of viable movies you can construct from the elements of any given fictional "universe", and the earlier movies set in that universe get first pick out of the available dramatic possibilities, claiming the best ones for themselves and leaving the later installments with fewer and fewer of the remaining scraps t

        • There are only a finite number of viable movies you can construct from the elements of any given fictional "universe",

          You're jus pretending TV serials don't exist. If the comic book industry has shown anything then there's literally and endless number of stories that can be told in any given fictional universe. There is no "best" and "scraps". There is only what writers are about to come up with on the spot at any given time.

          Case in point Dune and this year's Part 2 instalment. This isn't the first or second time the Dune story was told but it's been by an insanely long shot - the best time it was told. The remakes were mi

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Jeremi ( 14640 )

            If the comic book industry has shown anything then there's literally and endless number of stories that can be told in any given fictional universe.

            ... but only a finite number of good ones. Eventually they just start repeating themselves, and grow stale.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by Kisai ( 213879 )

        Nah.

        Most new stuff is not good, because it doesn't take risks.
        Most sequels are not good because it doesn't take risks.

        The reason why something like Deadpool and Wolverine, or Beetlejuice Beetlejuice make money, is because these are anticipated sequels, and you could watch them without knowing the first film in the series. Nobody wants to do homework to watch a sequel, which is what DCU fails at, and what MCU is passable at.

        MCU only works in film and doesn't in television because nobody has time to watch bot

      • ALL the movies in this survey/article are derivative because this is about making money. Originality is a quaint dead concept in movies... and software ... and music. Feed people baby food long enough and they will lose their taste for flavor. Mission Impossible? No. Mission accomplished!

        Don't scare anyone with an new idea. We're only in it for the money*
        *Frank Zappa

        Another on brand post defending the worst ideas. Way to go, garbz.
      • Terminator 2 > Terminator and Mission Impossibles also have improved on the first. But that's more of the exception than the rule. The list of later released movies (incl prequels) that are better than the first, is not very long. Though it would still be great if Guy Ritchie would make RocknRolla 2.

    • Otherwise I'd be having a perfect 10 out of 10 there.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Kisai ( 213879 )

      Just wait for them to come out on a streaming platform.

      There is no longer any reason to watch a movie at the theatre unless you like paying 50 dollars and eating popcorn while people do obnoxious things with their phones.

    • New movies are either Hollywood Equality Sermons or blatant pandering to nostalgia of the age group with the largest amount of disposable income. Neither are worth watching, and there's very little in-between.

  • And meanwhile... (Score:3)

    by MpVpRb ( 1423381 ) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @07:38PM (#65048781)

    ...talented writers can't find work.
    No trend lasts forever, I'm hoping that originality and creativity returns someday.
    But, I fear that it will get a LOT worse before it gets better

    • Re:And meanwhile... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Baron_Yam ( 643147 ) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @08:14PM (#65048847)

      The issue is with so much money on the line, the investors get stupidly conservative. If you invest in a sequel, sure, you're not likely going to get the same result but you're going to have a built-in audience and an advertising boost. It's a 'proven' property.

      In the end, greed dooms it all. Movies don't need to cost that much. The average Hallmark movie has a $2M budget and takes less than a month to make. You could pay a script writer $100K to spend a year getting your script just right and then knock out that movie while barely noticing the difference in your budget.

      Top name actors can pull down enough in a single movie payday to make Hallmark level movies for a years, and could choose any script they want that doesn't involve lots of CGI or stunts. They don't.

      It's all about the greed.

      • I work to make money and you probably do too. I don't fault actors for wanting big paychecks one little bit, especially because Hollywood executives are fickle and one or two disappointments can tank an actor's career. They often don't want to take the risk on what they see as a falling star. Make hay while the sun shines.

        I'm probably not going to pay to see a cheap but decent movie in a theater just for something to do and it seems like more and more people are with me. Most such movies are frankly better

        • Sorry, but if you get paid $75m for a year of work even once, that IS a career. $4m invested and you can coast for the rest of your days.

          It's greed.

          • If I was a Hollywood actor I'd be in line to take a pay cut for the betterment of the industry right after the last studio executive, board member, and producer.

            • That's the thing - after the first big payday, you can bail and be the executive, board, and producer on more modest productions for basically the rest of your life even if they lose money (as long as they bring in something).

      • The choice investors make when choosing which movies are made reflects the overall economy. Big growth and low interest rates mean exploring new IP and taking a risk with new directors and actors. High interest rates mean the studios go with reliable ROI sequels and familiar faces. You can go back through 50 years of movie releases and correlate that to the stock market.
    • Naah, look at how popular all the sequels and prequels are! They're the entire top ten, so obviously we need more sequels, sequels, sequels, and no new movies or new ideas of any kind.

    • You're begging the question. Talent does not equal creativity to develop a unique universe. There are many talented writers working on sequel movies. Heck even when you box yourself into making a remake there's still an insane creative latitude in the story telling and you still need incredible writers to help you tell it. Case in point: Dune and this year's Part 2. They are completely unlike the original movie and were billed as "unfilmable" right until the appropriately talented creative team got involved

  • Big money, big nuts (Score:3)

    by backslashdot ( 95548 ) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @07:57PM (#65048823)

    The problem is that making a movie is expensive. We're seeing the same thing in pharmaceuticals, where new ideas get zero investment. It has become so expensive that only "sure" bets get investment. If a lottery ticket cost 1 million dollars very few people would buy it. That's why investment is attracted to existing tech. Like, if you're hiring would you hire someone with zero experience straight out of college? I mean, they might be just as capable as an experienced person. The person who has a resume filled with similar things that you want to do gets hired. That's because it's a surer bet than the out-of-college person with a blank resume (who might be just as, or more, capable than the experienced worker). It's also why someone would hire an MIT grad over a state college grad even though both bachelor's degrees have pretty the same curriculum.

  • I've seen 2 movies from that list in the theater; but if that's the extent of the list it's no wonder the movie industry is tanking.

    • I've seen 2 movies from that list in the theater; but if that's the extent of the list it's no wonder the movie industry is tanking.

      you were expecting a more extensive list of movies in the top ten list? Does "ten" mean some other value where you're from?

      Or were you thinking it was binary? In which case you saw all of them.

    • Theaters have been complaining that Hollywood won't give them enough movies. They are all more interested in streaming now.

  • Dune 2? (Score:5, Insightful)

    by fjo3 ( 1399739 ) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @08:19PM (#65048859)
    Dune 2 shouldn't count towards this terrible Hollywood trend. It's neither a sequel nor a prequel - it is part two of the same book.
    • I really want to like Dune, but it's really hard to get around the eugenics aspect, because that is so central to the plot and the worldbuilding. He attributes many things to genetics which are definitely not a result of genetics.

    • But it's definitely a re-make, and not a new, original storyline.

    • Yet it could be considered as a remake.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by mjwx ( 966435 )

      Dune 2 shouldn't count towards this terrible Hollywood trend. It's neither a sequel nor a prequel - it is part two of the same book.

      Technically it's a remake... sure a vastly superior remake to Lynch's 1980s attempt but a remake nonetheless. Also both films (or all 3 depending on how you want to count them) were adaptations of a 1965 novel, so it's pretty far from being an original work.

      At least sequels and prequels aren't remakes as Hollywood is terrible for making shitty remakes, even though Dune the exception, for every Dune there are 100 crappy remakes.

  • Independent theaters are still worth going to (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fjo3 ( 1399739 ) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @08:23PM (#65048869)
    I am lucky enough to have one in my town, and I go regularly to see movies from before I was born on the big screen. Mine even serves good beer!

  • The first two Deadpool movies were entertaining. I never read the comics or cared about superheroes. Deadpool and Wolverine seemed to be 90% in franchise jokes and references to movies I haven't seen. The movie was not good.

    • The only good Dead Pool movie was the 1988 original, with Clint Eastwood. (sorry, couldn't resist ;)

  • All the top 10 grossing movies of 2022 were also sequels or prequels.

  • Movies are just commodities from an industry that could give a shit about art. Hollywood reflects our modern culture, and the best that we have today is fake shit pretending to be something that it is not. This has been the case for quite a while. Whether it is AI, the latest smartphone, social media, video games, or movies, we are just regurgitating old shit sold by today’s snake oil salesmen. The biggest difference between today and 30 years ago is that we can make more realistic seeming fake shit.

  • when there are mostly (Score:3)

    by ClueHammer ( 6261830 ) on Sunday December 29, 2024 @09:09PM (#65048995)
    Sequels or Prequels this is not an unexpected result.

    • Except there are not mostly sequels or prequels. There were over 900 movies released this year. The sequels and prequels make up the single digit percentages of them. Maybe go and have a look at something that isn't marketed to you by someone with a $100million marketing budget and you can help put originality into the list again.

  • That's because most movies these days are sequels, prequels, or remakes

  • Earning are not profits, wait until all of the studios behind these films report a loss at the end of the year thanks to "Hollywood accounting".

    Wonder which would hare reported the highest LOI (Loss on investment) on paper at the end.. they should do award shows for the accounting firms. I'd watch those instead of the Oscars.

    As for prequels/sequels vs originals... the quality of scripts has been dropping for decades... with the advent of AI assistance... it will only get worse. Studios are going to conti

  • These slashFilm and slashdot headlines are unfortunately slanted clickbait intended to draw visitors to complain about the lack of originality coming out of Hollywood. As presented, the implication is the only successful releases of 2024 were sequels. True, sequels were the MOST successful, but there were also a lot of successful new stories released in 2024 and 2023. For example, the top 3 of 2023 (Barbie, Super Mario Bros. and Oppenheimer) were totally original works from talented directors that made bank

    • Ya, Wicked is not a remake or prequel. It's a movie about a musicals derived from a novel that is unique. Now, movies about musicals might fit the bill... But it's nothing like movies about musicals about movies (Hairspray & The Producers).

  • Cinema is about as relevant now as the top-selling singles charts. The real world is streaming.

  • It's dead, Jim.

  • It is hard to NOT have such a list because they are pretty much not making any other movies from Hollywood for the big screens anymore, every release is some wild cash grab of an existing IP.
    Now show us how steeply the numbers of movie goers have declined!

  • There's a simple reason for all these sequels: they are easy to calculate, financially. Say, you have produced and released "Dumb and Brutal" parts I to IV you can predict quite safely how "Dumb and Brutal V" is going to perform, how much it will cost and how much profit will come out in the end. So you basically make a financial product out of it and sell it to investors instead of taking up expensive credit and find financiers for the production. That's also the reason why cinema sucks nowadays. The media

    • There's no risk taking. The movies are extremely expensive to make, therefore they must be guaranteed to be hits. And the only way Hollywood can stack those odds is to use an existing formula. So turn the crank and churn out a sequel, a part of a franchise, or a remake. If they could do a Marvel superhero and Star Wars crossover movie, they would absolutely create one.

      Creativity is a luxury that Hollywood cannot afford.

  • Dune & Dune: Part Two were both awesome and my son and me made sure we saw both at big screen theaters ! Seeing them on a smaller screen is a huge disservice to them and the experience can't be matched. Dune: Part Two - a couple of scenes where the hairs on your arms raised up. Last 2 John Wick movies were also seen at theaters !
  • Bad puns aside, Hollywood seems to be interested in a demographic and cultural sector that I have not belonged to for a long time now. That's OK: I won't feel offended if they do not want my money.

    • I feel the same way. I have not, and will not see, see any of these movies. Dune is one of my favorite novels, but I found Dune 1 to be an utterly boring snoozefest, so Dune 2 is firmly on the do not watch list. (I am admittedly one who enjoyed the Lynch Dune for all its oddities and awful parts.)

      Seeing this list makes me experience one of those moments where I have to come to terms with just how far out of the cultural norm I am.

  • So nothing original coming our of Hollywood. Just more mindless repeats. No wonder people dont goo to the movies any more. Crappy movies and if you want to watch them wait a few months and they are streaming.

  • People still go to the movies? Why?

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