2024 Box Office Needs These to Be Hits

Flashback: The #1 grossing film for January 2023 was “Avatar: The Way of Water.” In January 2022, it was “Spider-Man: No Way Home.” Both films were #1 on the last weekend of the month as well as the first.

Contrast that with “Wonka” (Warner Bros.), which is a clear success headed for a worldwide gross of over $500 million — but isn’t remotely in the same league. That explains why January is more than 20 percent below last year, but this month has a chance to succeed if it does something entirely different.

Yes, 2024 needs franchise titles and sequels to carry their weight; “Dune Part 2,” “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire,” and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” all arrive in March. However, to rise above the year’s grim $8 billion projection for domestic gross (down 12 percent from 2023), a whole slew of standalone titles must thrive.

Enter the weekend of January 12. The four-day Martin Luther King Day holiday traditionally boosts grosses, but this year features something very unusual. The period usually offers two new wide studio films and this year there’s three: “Mean Girls” (Paramount), “The Beekeeper” (MGM Amazon), and “The Book of Clarence” (Sony). And they’re all originals.

These plus holdovers (including the surging “Anyone but You,” the top grossing film midweek) and expansions of more limited titles (led by MGM Amazon’s “American Fiction“) could equal…