A huge number of the year's films significantly underperformed at the box office, attributed to high budgets and low marketing due to the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes.
The overwhelming commercial success of two of the year’s strangest big-budget films, Oppenheimer and Barbie, released on the same day this summer, is an obvious sign of the vigor of the cinemascape.
"[2][excessive quote] The year saw an unusually large number of high-profile, big-budget films which subsequently under-performed at the box office, leading to the coining of the term "flopbuster.
Fury of the Gods,[5] Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves,[6] Fast X,[7] The Little Mermaid,[8] Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,[9] The Flash,[10] Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,[11] Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken,[12] Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One,[13] Blue Beetle,[14] Expend4bles,[15] Haunted Mansion,[16] The Marvels,[17] and Wish.
[18] Many reasons have been given for the phenomenon, with the most common being the high budgets (and thus increased thresholds for breaking even and making a profit), low marketing due to the 2023 Hollywood labor disputes, and a general perception that audiences had grown tired of the abundance of superhero-themed movies, a trend which came to be known as "superhero fatigue.