2023: A year of trials, tribulations, and triumphs for Hollywood

As the curtains fall on 2023, we know that Barbie will not only be remembered as the year’s runaway hit and the top grosser — memorably, it crossed $1 billion mark at the box office in just 17 days, breaking the record held by Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2 — but also one that set a string of records for a film helmed by a woman director.

For instance, it earned more than any other film in Warner Bros.’ 100-year history. The Margot Robbie-starrer was also the highest-grossing film ever from a female filmmaker at the domestic box office, and also one with the biggest opening weekend for a non-sequel, non-remake, non-superhero film.

Oppenheimer, on the other hand, collected $952,021,870 gross worldwide; it ranks third in the list of 2023’s highest grossers after the animated film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie, a surprise hit of the year, which grossed an impressive $1,361,367,353 worldwide. In the midst of these triumphs, however, Hollywood grappled with strikes by the writers and actors guilds for five months, which paralysed production, leading to the postponement of major titles like Dune 2 to 2024.

There were too many films that are still under production. The impact of the strike was evident at the festivals during the Fall; the red carpets that were rolled out were noticeably sparse. Even though the historical halt in production over writers-actors’ working conditions was declared over in September, its repercussions will be seen in the months to come.

The Superhero sagas

Even though critics were keen to write off the superhero genre after the failure of the tentpoles with inflated budgets by Disney and Warner, the year saw some of them maintain their formidable presence at the cash counters, with Disney’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 raking in an impressive $845.6 million worldwide.

However, the rest of the films from the stable, including The Little Mermaid, Elemental, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania generated expectations, but did not meet them. But here is the paradox: with $476,071,180 gross earnings, Paul Rudd and Evangeline Lilly-starrer Ant-Man and the Wasp figures at the 10^th position of this year’s best grossers.

Similarly, The Little Mermaid, Rob Marshall-directed Disney remake, starring Halle Bailey, ranks seventh in the list of highest grossers of the year, with worldwide gross of $569,626,289 at the box-office. And Elemental has been ranked ninth on the list of highest grossers, with a collection of $496,176,105. The Pixar animated romance explored how people from different backgrounds (fire and water) can overcome their differences. Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which notched up $691 million globally, too, is among the year’s standouts. With Warner’s heartwarming family musical prequel Wonka opening between $35-40 million domestically, on top of $43 million from early international debuts, all does not seem to be lost.

The Marvels and The Flash stumbled, and DC Universe’s outing Blue Beetle, directed by Angel Manuel Soto, failed to translate its charms into robust ticket sales. However, as 2023 draws to a close, it is tough to sound the death knell of the superhero movie. Marvel still seems to be mightier than any franchise around.

DC’s Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, a December release and the sequel to its billion dollar-making predecessor, may have received negative reviews, but it has not been a dampener commercially; as DC Extended Universe goes for a reboot, we can expect the powerhouse to bring some magic back in the New Year. Agreed that it has dented the genre, with its last eight films over five years all failing to top $400 million, but we must remember that the first Aquaman in 2017 was a blockbuster that earned $1.15 billion in total. 

The Martin Scorsese epic  

A Martin Scorsese film, irrespective of how much it earns, is an event. In 2023, we saw the phenomenal director come up with Killers of the Flower Moon, the crime epic about the true story of the Osage murders in 1920s Oklahoma, based on David Grann’s books. Having grossed a total of $156.3 million, the film looks set to create a slew of records at Oscars, in categories like Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actress, Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Film Editing.

Wes Anderson’s Asteroid City, starring Scarlett Johansson, was another major highlight of the year. The film helped the idiosyncratic director create a record: it brought him an estimated $9 million at the US box office across its first three days. His previous career-high over that same period of time was $8.5m during the theatrical run of The Grand Budapest Hotel (2014) — his highest-grossing feature to date, it was nominated for nine awards at the 87th Academy Awards, including Best Picture, and won four. Sofia Coppola’s Priscilla, based on the life of Priscilla Presley and her 1985 memoir Elvis and Me, and her eighth film as a director, too, had its little place in the year’s roll-call of movies.

Other hits, other wonders

The other top grossers of the year include Fast X: Fast & Furious franchise’s Fast X (starring Vin Diesel) that figures on the fifth spot with a total collection of $704,875,015 worldwide. However, if you compare it with its previous instalments, it did underperform. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One, sequel to the Mission: Impossible series, is also on the list of top-earning films. However, the Paramount pictures production starring Tom Cruise, failed to surpass records of its predecessor Fallout (2018).

If Greta Gerwig created history, a clutch of debut women filmmakers made films that will fill you with a lot of hope: Celine Song’s Past Lives, Savanah Leaf’s Earth Mama, Raven Jackson’s All Dirt Roads Taste of Salt, Georgia Oakley’s Blue Jean, A.V. Rockwell’s A Thousand and One and Tina Satter’s Reality, among others. Besides, there were films this year that did not disappoint at all. For instance, Ben Affleck’s Air, based on the story of how Nike landed Michael Jordan, which boasts of terrific performances by Matt Damon and Viola Davis.

Then, there was American Fiction, the hilarious directorial debut of Cord Jefferson, adapted from Percival Everett’s Erasure, a wickedly intelligent satire about the ‘commodification of marginalized voices and a portrait of an artist forced to re-examine his integrity.’ Jeffrey Wright plays a writer/literature professor, Thelonious “Monk” Ellison, who impulsively writes a joke book mocking “Black trauma porn” which is lapped up by the White intelligentsia. Wright delivers a nuanced performance in the film, an indictment of the West’s obsession with reducing people to outrageous stereotypes.

The Color Purple, an adaptation of Alice Walker’s novel and directed by Blitz Bazawule, brought the musical about heartbreak alive on the screen. Talking of adaptations, Leave the World Behind, writer-director Sam Esmail’s apocalyptic thriller based on Ruman Alam’s novel, featuring Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali, was among the most talked-about films in literary and film circles, even though it had some issues with execution. 

The Holdovers, a comedy-drama about misfits left behind at a New England prep school in 1970, which reunited director Alexander Payne with his Sideways star Paul Giamatti, is another winner of the year, with a terrific performance by Da’Vine Joy Randolph as a grieving mother whose son died in Vietnam. Bradley Cooper’s Maestro had the critics divided, but the biography of conductor Leonard Bernstein, with Cooper playing the lead and Carey Mulligan as his wife Felicia, is worth a watch.