2016 has been dubbed “the year of nostalgia” by countless critics and, looking back at last year’s box office trends, it’s hard to dispute such a statement. It was a year of prequels (a la Rogue One of the Star Wars franchise and Harry Potter’s Magical Beasts and Where to Find Them), sequels and throwbacks.
Disney Pixar’s Finding Dory, Finding Nemo’s much-anticipated sequel, was the top-grossing film of 2016, raking in nearly $490 million dollars domestically; the family-friendly animation was released over the summer and was just one among a plethora of anthropomorphic titles, including Sing (Illumination), The Secret Life of Pets (Illumination), and Disney’s Zootopia (which won best animated feature at the Golden Globes).
2016 also saw a revival in the “musical” genre with the aforementioned animation Sing, a riff on reality singing competitions, and Damien Chazelle’s La La Land, a formal nod to the days of Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire, starring Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone. Chazelle’s musical performed a supermarket sweep at the 74th annual Golden Globes, nabbing all seven awards for which it received a nomination and breaking a record for most Golden Globes won by a single movie ever, casting big expectations for Oscar Sunday (February 26).
Also record-breaking, national ticket prices reached an all-time high in 2016, averaging about $8.61; ticket prices have been on a steady incline since 2014’s box office bust (box office sales hit a two-decade low) when ticket prices averaged a mere $8.14. Regardless of the surge in ticket prices (or perhaps because of it), 2016 hit a box office milestone when it accumulated over $11 billion in ticket sales. Not bad 2016, not bad.
2017 is predicted to be yet another record-breaking year.