What is going on with the Box Office in 2019?

As has been stated a few times before, one of my interests in following the box office and how much money movies make. I like following success stories and failures and then looking at potential factors in why certain movies succeeded or failed. 2019 has been an extremely interesting year to follow at the box office, and to this point it has been a year the likes of which has never been seen before. Lets take a look at the top 20 movies of the year so far and how much money they have made.

1	Avengers: Endgame	BV	$857,190,335	4,662	$357,115,007	4,662	4/26	-
2	Captain Marvel	BV	$426,829,839	4,310	$153,433,423	4,310	3/8	7/4
3	Toy Story 4	BV	$404,979,743	4,575	$120,908,065	4,575	6/21	-
4	The Lion King (2019)	BV	$403,748,078	4,802	$191,770,759	4,725	7/19	-
5	Spider-Man: Far from Home	Sony	$354,788,925	4,634	$92,579,212	4,634	7/2	-
6	Aladdin (2019)	BV	$348,926,592	4,476	$91,500,929	4,476	5/24	-
7	Us	Uni.	$175,005,930	3,743	$71,117,625	3,741	3/22	6/6
8	John Wick: Chapter 3 - Parabellum	LG/S	$169,935,857	3,850	$56,818,067	3,850	5/17	-
9	How to Train Your Dragon: The Hidden World	Uni.	$160,799,505	4,286	$55,022,245	4,259	2/22	6/13
10	The Secret Life of Pets 2	Uni.	$154,899,025	4,564	$46,652,680	4,561	6/7	-
11	Pokemon Detective Pikachu	WB	$143,918,451	4,248	$54,365,242	4,202	5/10	-
12	Shazam!	WB (NL)	$140,371,656	4,306	$53,505,326	4,217	4/5	7/25
13	Dumbo (2019)	BV	$114,750,181	4,259	$45,990,748	4,259	3/29	-
14	Glass	Uni.	$111,035,005	3,844	$40,328,920	3,841	1/18	4/4
15	Godzilla: King of the Monsters	WB	$110,074,501	4,108	$47,776,293	4,108	5/31	-
16	The Upside	STX	$108,252,517	3,568	$20,355,000	3,080	1/11	5/2
17	The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part	WB	$105,806,508	4,303	$34,115,335	4,303	2/8	5/9
18	Rocketman	Par.	$95,335,549	3,610	$25,725,722	3,610	5/31	-
19	Alita: Battle Angel	Fox	$85,710,210	3,802	$28,525,613	3,790	2/14	5/9
20	Men in Black InternationalSony	$79,017,701

Now lets dissect this a bit. Alladin is the #6 movie of the year and has made $348 million. By the end of its run it will cross $350 million making for six movies making at least 350 million by eaely August. Even when adjusting ticket prices for every year to 2019 ticket prices I had to go all the way back to 2004 to find a year where there were six $350 million dollar movies for the entire year! There are at least two more movies this year guaranteed to cross 350 million (Star Wars and Frozen 2) with two more movies that both have about a 50/50 chance of making it (IT 2, and Jumanji 2.) But now look at the gap between Aladdin and the #7 movie of the year, US. Us made $175 million, which means the gap between the #6 and #7 movie is going to be double! Not a single movie has made between 175 million and 350 million this year! This result shows a disturbing trend at the box office the past few years that has slowly developed and reached an insane level this year. That trend is that people are showing up in larger numbers than ever to see the Mega Blockbuster movies, but are showing up in lower numbers than ever to see every other movie. They say the gap between the rich and poor is larger than ever in America and its a good analogy to whats happened to the box office. The gap betweent he big blockbuster movies and the mid level movies is larger than ever. 

This summer Spider-Man, Lion King, Alladin, and Toy Story 4 were all massive successes but it came at the expense of everything else that came out. Literally every single movie since Memorial Day that wasnt these 4 movies has underperformed expectations and most of them underperformed in a big way. Just a few examples

Men in Black-Expected Gross: 110 Million Actual: 80 Million
Rocketman-Expected Gross: 175 Million Actual: 95 Million
Godzilla-Expected Gross: 200 Million Actual: 110 Million
Secret Life of Pets 2-Expected Gross: 220 Million Actual: 155 Million
Annabelle Goes Home-Expected Gross: 110 Million Actual: 70 Million

I could go on and on but basically the point is that if you are not a mega five star blockbuster movie, you are probably going to make less than you want. If this trend becomes normal for many more years we could see a time where more mid level movies go straight to blu ray and streaming and never even make it to the movie theater, and the only movies at the theater will be the big blockbusters. Hopefully this trend normalizes, but for 2019 there is a huge difference between the haves and have nots.