Make ’em laugh! But also, make some money.
For the last decade, the theatrical comedy has been adrift, but with the success of movies like “One of Them Days” and a slew of chucklers to come this summer — including “The Naked Gun” reboot and a movie that mashes up the “South Park” guys with hip-hop icon Kendrick Lamar — could we be witnessing the revival?
While the 2000s and 2010s saw a consistent stream of gut-busting box office gold like “Wedding Crashers,” “The Hangover,” “21 Jump Street” and “Bridesmaids,” the theatrical comedy has struggled to regain its footing in the post-pandemic era.
In the summer of 2023, the raunchy comedy was poised for a comeback with a trio of R-rated pics — “Joy Ride,” “No Hard Feelings” and “Strays” — all hitting theaters. But that didn’t quite pan out: “Joy Ride” and “Strays” both failed to turn a profit. Meanwhile, the Jennifer Lawrence-led “No Hard Feelings” opened at No. 4, ultimately recouping its $45 million budget at the global box office but failing to pierce the zeitgeist until it was added to Netflix four months later. Are audiences conditioned to save the laughs for their couches?
“The time has passed when five comedies could open during the summer, and you have a reasonable expectation that at least two or three of them would be hits on some level, if not all of them,” says Fandango director of analytics and Box Office Theory founder and owner Shawn Robbins.
That’s not to say that moviegoers don’t want to chuckle anymore. Rather, the theatrical comedy has been largely replaced by films of other genres that tout their humor but aren’t pure comedy.
“Look back at where the most successful comedies have come from, and it’s been in the more elevated genres, like superhero movies. It’s been more of a crossover,” adds Robbins, citing “Deadpool,” “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” and “Barbie” as the kind of comedy-adjacent fare that has driven moviegoers to multiplexes in recent years. “I think that’s a byproduct of the fact that the last 10 or 15 years have been so dominated by comic-book movies and other genres like fantasy and sci-fi, to a point that it’s changed what audiences come to expect out of a comedy.”
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Paramount Pictures’ motion picture group president Mike Ireland similarly cites those high-flying blockbusters as a key factor in audience behavior changes. “In recent years, a lot of big franchise films have succeeded by being all things at once. But a superhero movie that is funny is not the same as a capital ‘C’ Comedy.”
Ireland adds, “I really feel like everything is cyclical. Everything old is new again. If you look at the really successful, low-cost, higher-side breakout hits of the of the 2000s, it was largely driven by comedies, and it feels like the world is ready for that again. I don’t think comedy, by itself, is an answer to the question of how to get people back to theaters, but I do think it is part and parcel of trying to find those genres and audiences that are underserved, and then telling stories well in that space, and then doing it again and again.”
The start of 2025 saw a glimmer of hope for original comedy in the form of Sony’s SZA and Keke Palmer starrer, “One of Them Days.” The film, which already has a sequel in the works, grossed over $50 million worldwide after its January release and surprisingly bested horror-thriller “Wolf Man” at the box office in its opening weekend.
Ireland is hoping laughs will prevail once again when Paramount releases the spoof comedy “The Naked Gun” this August.
“For the last few years, horror has been an incredibly high-upside proposition, and we started to see that fade a little bit,” he says. “So the calculation for us was, ‘What’s next? Where does the audience want to go? What is going to get them to return to theaters?’ It feels like there was this really wide-open, unaddressed opportunity when it came to comedies. And we felt like that was a place where we could win if we got there first. ‘The Naked Gun’ is the best possible way to test that.”
The Liam Neeson-led reboot from director Akiva Schaffer will serve as a crucial indicator for audiences’ comedy cravings, Robbins says. “I’m really fascinated to see how ‘The Naked Gun’ plays out, because that’s a style of comedy that I think a lot of people would argue is for an older generation. But I’m also a firm believer that everything comes back around again, and maybe it will connect. It’s really one of the hardest movies to predict.”
Ireland’s biggest hope for the film is “reintroducing the genre to the audience in a real way.”
The genre’s rebound is of particular import to Paramount, which has a new “Scary Movie” and an untitled comedy feature teaming “South Park” creators Matt Parker and Trey Stone with Lamar both slated for 2026. The studio has also acquired a “MASH”-inspired pitch from comedian Nikki Glaser and a spec script titled “Guys With No Friends” from “Can’t Hardly Wait” duo Deborah Kaplan and Harry Elfont.
“I don’t think there’s a harder genre to execute,” Robbins says. “Comedy is very underrated in terms of how difficult it is to make successful and relatable. What is funny to one person could really miss the mark with 100 other people. There’s not a safety net of a basic storytelling template.” Last year, Jerry Seinfeld claimed the genre has been killed by “the extreme left and P.C. crap, and people worrying so much about offending other people”; he later walked back those comments.
Ireland insists that the studio’s mix of original content and tried-and-true IP isn’t about risk mitigation but wanting to tell the best stories possible. “It kind of feels like we’ve reached the outer limits of what you can accomplish with existing titles. I think the audience wants things that feel new. We’ll continue to pursue both. But I think original movies are just as important in 2025 for everybody as IP.”
He remains confident that, with the right projects, moviegoers will soon flock to comedy once again. “The audience is there. They’re willing to go. We just have to continue to give them good reasons,” Ireland says. “We have to continue to try to deliver new things in new ways. It feels like in the attention economy, we’re breaking through with things that are more vital.”
From Variety US