As Summer 2025 winds down, it’s time to analyze the box office, with the hits, the misses, the surprises and more:
Spring leftovers “A Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners” kept the party going into the early weeks of May, stealing some attention away from Marvel’s “Thunderbolts*”, which only managed $190 million domestically. “Final Destination: Bloodlines” scored a $50 million-plus debut. And Memorial Day weekend, as expected, was a knockout, especially for Disney’s live-action / CG version of “Lilo & Stitch”. It’s the highest grossing movie of the season, with nearly $422 million in North America and over $1 Billion worldwide.
Paramount also has reason to celebrate, as “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning”, which opened the same day as “Lilo & Stitch”, made $25 million more than 2023’s “Dead Reckoning — Part One”, to conclude the 30-year Tom Cruise cinematic saga. End of May and early June titles “Karate Kid: Legends” ($53M) and “Ballerina” ($58M) didn’t live-up to franchise predecessors, and Wes Anderson’s “The Phoenician Scheme” (a tad under $20M) was down 30% from “Asteroid City” just two years ago.
Family remake momentum continued with Universal and DreamWorks’ “How to Train Your Dragon” ($262 million and counting). Live-action version of “HTTYD2” is set for June 2027. Star power and grown-up rom-dram counter programming of Celine Song’s “Materialists” ($36.5M) helped it become A24’s 7th biggest film of all-time. “28 Years Later” made nearly $10M more than “Elio” in their late June opening weekend face-off, but the Pixar animated feature ended-up totaling a few million more than Danny Boyle’s horror/thriller. “Elio” didn’t have quite the impact of fellow Pixar original “Elemental” ($154M in Summer 2023), but it did have a 3.5x multiple ($72.9M from a $20.8M open), rare for most major releases.
After a couple of larger than expected drops, “F1” has had some staying power during the second half of summer. It’s closing-in on $185 million domestically, plus another $400 million overseas. “F1” crushed “M3GAN 2.0” in their debut weekend. The Blumhouse sequel is arguably the biggest bomb of the summer, with just $24 million domestically. (The first one did $95M).
“Jurassic World: Rebirth”, a surprise $5 Regal Monday Mystery Movie more than a week before its 4th of July release, is one of the top grossers worldwide at over $800 million, but that’s down $200M from 2022’s “Dominion”. (Domestically it’s $332M to $376M, a 12% decline.) Overtaking its North America total is “Superman”, with strong WOM propelling a $125M open to a $341M total and counting. Marvel’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” doesn’t have the same kind of ‘repeat business’ impact, and it shows, with a smaller debut ($118M) and much smaller total (currently $250M).
July 18th trio of “I Know What You Did Last Summer”, “Eddington” and “Smurfs” all underperformed, though the animated revival of those iconic characters is doing much more business overseas. Another animated return is hoping for repeat success, as “The Bad Guys 2” is close to matching its 2022 predecessor beat for beat at this point, hoping to reach $97M again.
Paramount’s “The Naked Gun” has attracted some business, but not exceptional numbers. It joins fellow comedy “Friendship” and NEON drama “The Life of Chuck” as films with significant, over-hyped, positive critical praise ahead of their releases. Disney’s fun (once it gets going) sequel “Freakier Friday” is bringing-in some moviegoers, though I thought it could do a little better. The late summer surprise is certainly horror flick “Weapons”, which is at $92 million and climbing —one of a half-dozen major success stories for WB in 2025.
(Source: Box Office Mojo)