Are reports of the death of the summer blockbuster premature?

Perhaps. After several big-budget films set for late spring releases like If, The Fall Guy, and Furiosa: a Mad Max Saga severely underperformed at the box office, it seemed like an ominous portent signaling disaster for the summer movies yet to be released.

That trend was reversed this past weekend when the Will Smith/Martin Lawrence actioner Bad Boys: Ride or Die opened to a promising domestic box office return of $56 million, with another $48.6 million cleared globally. That’s an improvement of 58% over Furiosa‘s opening weekend.

Add in other factors, like Will Smith’s (sort of) recent scandal at the 2022 Academy Awards and the fact that Ride or Die is the fourth film in the Bad Boys franchise, and the news is definitely positive. The fourth Bad Boys accounted for more than half of all theatrical business this past weekend.

June of 2023 saw studios earning a $1 billion dollars in box office receipts, and June 2022 was just under that at $968 million. Mega-hits like Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Jurassic World: Dominion helped pump up those numbers, as did holdover support from Memorial Day successes like The Little Mermaid and Top Gun: Maverick.

But theater owners won’t be able to count on that added business this month, so despite the encouraging returns from Bad Boys, this month is looking much bleaker.

Inside Out 2 and A Quiet Place Day One will be in theaters soon, and will be good indicators if May 2024 was a box office anomaly or an indicator of bad times ahead for movies like Despicable Me 4 and Deadpool & Wolverine, set to open in July.