Doctor Strange 2 And Top Gun: Maverick Help North America Reclaim Spot As World's Biggest Film Market

gamerant.com:

The success ofDoctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness and Top Gun: Maverick helped North America reclaim its place as the most lucrative film market in the world after the first half of 2022 showed increased recovery from COVID-era lows.

In 2020, the Chinese film market surpassed North America as the most lucrative in the world, thanks largely to the COVID-19 pandemic, which swept the globe early that year. China's effective (though controversial) handling of the pandemic insulated its film market from negative effects, while the USA's disastrous handling crippled its film industry. In 2022, however, the shoe was on the other foot, thanks in part to Doctor Strange 2 and Top Gun: Maverick.

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Per The Hollywood Reporter, in the first half of this year, China saw a 38% decrease in ticket sales from the same period last year, with only $2.6 billion in revenue. This is due in part to a worsening of COVID woes in China, where strict lockdowns in major population centers like Shanghai and Shenzhen have had brutal financial effects. Meanwhile, the loosening of COVID restrictions in the United States, the increased normalization of movie-going, and the return of major franchises to the screen have led to a substantial recovery of the North American film market. In the first half of this year, North America generated $3.7 billion, almost equal to the entirety of 2021 ticket sales. Part of this story has been the fantastic performance of blockbusters like Top Gun: Maverick (which grossed $571 million domestically so far) and Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (with $410 million), which both had numbers so colossal they bring one back to the good old days before