How do you save a studio like Lionsgate?

It's a bit of an understatement to say that movie studio Lionsgate (which previously released titles like The Hunger Games, La La Land, and Knives Out, among other movies) has had a bad 2024 at the domestic box office. So far, this company has taken in only $200.6 million domestically in 2024. The outfit's biggest movie of 2024 (so far) in North America is The Strangers: Chapter 1, which grossed $35.2 million. Exempting the lop-sided years of 2020-2022 (which really dealt with theater closures and Lionsgate barely releasing anything theatrically), 2024 is on track to be the studio's lowest-grossing year since 2011, when The Lincoln Lawyer was its highest-grossing project.

These box office woes have become especially egregious over the last eight weeks. This is when Lionsgate unleashed a string of historically bad bombs. Borderlands, The Crow, and Killer’s Game all opened over just six weeks and each one became one of 2024’s biggest box office failures. Heck, The Crow and Killer's Game both ended up scoring two of the 14 biggest third weekend theater drops (which is when theaters are no longer contractually obligated to carry a new release) in history. Then there’s Megalopolis, a movie Lionsgate has no financial investment in. This studio’s only getting paid a fee to distribute it for Francis Ford Coppola. However, having Lionsgate's logo preceding another historic box office flop after so many misfires was not ideal.

It's been a dreadful year for Lionsgate at the box office. To rub salt in the wounds, significantly smaller studios A24 and Neon each scored 2024 hits that more than doubled the domestic total of Lionsgate’s biggest 2024 movie. What’s going on with Lionsgate? How can this studio turn things around?

The biggest Lionsgate movies ever are the Hunger Games titles, the final Twilight installment (which it inherited from buying Summit Entertainment), the original Divergent, and La La Land. Action-oriented titles like the last two John Wick installments populate the studio's top five, no question. However, many of Lionsgate's biggest titles have courted women and teenagers. Additionally, Lionsgate’s most lucrative classic titles took chances on titles nobody thought would make money. Tyler Perry’s original movies were rebuffed by other studios. before Lionsgate/Summit bought its distribution rights at the last minute. Did anyone think an original musical like La La Land could make money?

Using basic logic, one would imagine Lionsgate continuing to pursue unusual projects, ignored genres, and under-fulfilled moviegoing demographics. Instead, Lionsgate’s gone the opposite route in 2024. The studio's slate of new release has been firmly divided into either horror (a genre every other studio, big and small, is cramming theaters with), action movies, and Christian films (another subgenre multiplexes are overloaded with). No wonder these titles have largely flopped. How can The Crow, Borderlands and Killer’s Game stand out while opening so close together? Audiences barely have time to catch their breath before the next Lionsgate action feature!

Even in late 2019, just before the pandemic, Lionsgate had major wide-release dramas like Midway and Bombshell hitting theaters. Those titles are gone from Lionsgate's 2024 releases. The rest of the year doesn't appear to be rectifying that problem further. A Wonder spin-off named White Bird (an encapsulation of Lionsgate’s other issue of trying too hard to exploit every movie in its library) finally hits theaters after countless release date delays this Friday. Then there’s the faith-based family comedy The Best Christmas Pageant Ever, which arrives on November 8.

A tad more variety exists in Lionsgate's 2025 exploits, between titles like the Michael Jackson biopic Michael and the new John Carney comedy Power Ballad. However, 2025 is still looking heavy on action, horror, and pointless retreads of old Lionsgate IP. Rather than pursuing the next big hit, Lionsgate is desperately exploiting Now You See Me and John Wick. In the ultimate sign of desperation, Lionsgate is turning to Blumhouse to try making The Blair Witch Project into a franchise once again. It didn't work the last two times. Each previous attempt only reinforced how you can't recreate the original film's lightning-in-a-bottle success...but it might work for them.

To offer one note in Lionsgate's favor, the studio has always had an erratic box office track record. This company has spent the last 15-ish years trapped between being one of the "major" studios and also being decidedly bigger than any other American independent film studio. This scale of the company means you inevitably end up with years like 2018. Save for A Simple Favor, Lionsgate had nothing but bombs that year. However, the costly nature of Lionsgate's failures in 2024 is still special even in the studio's history.

Even a recurring excuse in major media publications that these flops are because of the previous Lionsgate regime, led by Joe Drake, isn’t quite enough to explain this financial cold streak. Presumably, the Borderlands boondoggle (which began when the movie started shooting in 2021) was all under Drake’s watch. Domestic rights to The Crow was also purchased last September through Drake. However, recent flop Killer’s Game was brought into Lionsgate by STX Films. That studio was run by newly minted Lionsgate Films head Adam Fogelson. The erratic box office track record of Fogelson's STX exploits should give everyone pause on Lionsgate's future.

If there's any advice Fogelson should heed in turning Lionsgate around, it's to remember what worked and failed at STX. The studio fared best (much like Lionsgate's biggest hits) when delivering movies that weren't in abundance in the marketplace. Bad Moms delivered raunchy comedy to women over the age of 35. Hustlers was a rare mainstream movie to humanize sex workers. Even The Upside delivered a lighter inspirational story in January 2019 after a 2018-2019 award season full of bleaker dramas (i.e. Beautiful Boy, The Front Runner, Boy Erased, A Private War, etc.) Delivering the umpteenth Mark Wahlberg action movie or Melissa McCarthy raunchy comedy, meanwhile, conjured up dismal box office returns. If you try too hard to mimic successes of the past, you'll end up with today's flops.

That’s a mantra Lionsgate has lived and died by in 2024. Borderlands just looked like an irritating Guardians of the Galaxy knock-off (the final film was even worse than that). The Crow remade the 1990s action movie nobody wanted to see overhauled. Even Megalopolis failed at the box office after a marketing campaign that only emphasized Coppola’s past hits. Where was the reason to see this new feature? Compare these titles to the 2024 sleeper hit Longlegs, which distributor Neon marketed with a deeply idiosyncratic marketing campaign. Civil War, meanwhile, had striking posters and billboards showing American monuments in disarray. No wonder these titles did circles around, say, Lionsgate’s Arthur the King, which focused on a star (Mark Wahlberg) that people don't want to see in inspirational dramas.

With an upcoming slate comprised of John Wick spin-offs and Blair Witch Project reboots, it’s currently doubtful a new regime can turn things around for Lionsgate in a meaningful fashion. But who knows? Nobody ever thought a movie from a smaller studio like Lionsgate could crack $400+ million domestically. Then the first Hunger Games came along. Who could’ve imagined Saw, a cheapie indie horror film at 2004’s Sundance Festival, would turn into a box office sensation? Lionsgate has beaten the odds before. The executives at this studio just need to nurture original ideas again, the kind that fueled franchises Lionsgate is so keen to exploit in 2024. Look for the next John Wick or Knives Out. Don’t just keep staring backward at hits and…aw beans, Lionsgate’s still trying to make a Dirty Dancing legacy sequel happen. They’re never getting out of this box office rut.