Inside Out 2 triumphs at the box office: but who said cinema doesn’t work in the summer?

If a couple of years ago we had asked exhibitors and distributors why our cinemas offered so many fewer titles in the summer compared to the rest of the world they would probably have told us that Italians, during the summer, prefer to go on holiday instead of locking yourself indoors to watch a movie. It is an extremely romantic, not to mention imaginative, vision of life given that, for many managers, it seems that in the summer they go to the seaside from June to September, forgetting about the many who, before seeing their holidays, necessarily have to stop in the city to work. And what do they do to entertain themselves? There are streaming platforms, of course, but why not take advantage of an outing with friends for that sharing activity that was once also one of the most popular places for first dates there was? Times have changed, it’s true, and the poverty of summer content at the cinema and on television has always made us fall down to all the fans who couldn’t understand why the distribution of Hollywood films didn’t stop in America but suffered a setback here.

Fortunately, things have only changed recently, when Italian distributors and exhibitors realized that, oh well, when a title is strong and is launched properly, spectators go to the cinema in the summer more than willingly. It happened in 2023 with Barbie, released in July at the same time as the rest of the world and capable of demonstrating that, even in the midst of the summer season, millions of Italians were eager to watch the film that had been most talked about in the previous months in order to have an opinion on what has been seen and not be excluded from the public debate. Same goes for Inside Out 2, the sequel to the successful Pixar film which, in less than a week, recorded a record taking that few would have bet on: in Italy in just a few days it grossed over 16 million euros (724 million dollars worldwide); an extraordinary result better than all the post-pandemic successes, Barbie And There’s still tomorrow of Cortellesi included. Leaving aside the fact that the entertainment capacity of cinema and television is always greatly underestimated during a period of the year in which we mistakenly think that everyday life crystallizes and can no longer move forward, it is good to have demonstrated that summer cinema in Italy is capable of giving satisfaction exactly as it happens abroad .

Pixar

Yes, in general in Italy people go to the cinema less and read much less than countries like Francebut it is also true that, when a film like Inside Out 2 arrives in theaters in America, many are scratching their heads wondering why the whole world sees it first and our country after – something that, for example, happened with Oppenheimerconsidering that Italy was one of the very few countries to choose not to distribute it to the cinema at the same time as Barbie because he feared it wouldn’t be successful. We understand what movie like Inside Out 2 And Barbie they don’t come out every year, but it would be appropriate to give the public a little more trust and allow him to entertain himself as he sees fit. Without deciding for him and thinking that she has neither the time nor the desire to see a good film in a room with the air conditioning on.