The 2025 Hollywood Box Office: Thoughts

At the end of 2024 considering the prospects of the North American box office in 2025 I wrote that it looked like a case of "a pre-pandemic slate being released into a post-pandemic market." I also wrote that this would "make 2025 look more like 2023 than it will 2024" with respect to the number of underperformers, especially at the big-budget end, due to the "tentpoles" coming out in a market some 30-40 percent smaller than it was before in real, inflated-adjusted terms, such that not only were there more movies chasing a pool of ticket-buyers no bigger than it was in 2024 (or 2023), but also that the terms of the game had changed qualitatively. (Simply put, with people on average going to the movies two rather than four times a year the big tentpoles were less likely to pull in the less-committed filmgoers critical to raising their takes to blockbuster levels, any one movie of whatever type now a tougher sell.)

In particular I was dubious about the superhero films given the weariness of the genre generally, and the DC and Marvel brands specifically, and in particular that the rush to claim "Marvel's back!" after Deadpool & Wolverine was at best wishful thinking given that that particular film ("R-rated, 'edgy,' 'meta'") was a poor litmus test for the Marvel Cinematic Universe, and perhaps even another indication of public weariness with the franchise and the genre given that one of the pleasures it offers fans is its Ryan Reynolds-flavored flippancy toward them. (Indeed, I said in so many words that not Deadpool but Captain America: Brave New World would be the real test of audience interest.) I can't say that I was optimistic about Mission: Impossible either given the poor performance of its predecessor (and the exhaustion of audience interest in the spy-fi genre more broadly), while I expected interest in the Jurassic World franchise would continue to erode. I also continued to hold that that success, and certainly profitably, would, in line with what I have referred to as "high concept 2.0," require not Disney-style ruthless milking of any franchise they can get their grubby mitts on in the expectation of everyone showing up but more careful targeting of films at portions of the audience, appealing more deeply rather than widely, a strategy at times containing room for big hits--for instance, by way of video game-based movies seizing on the enthusiasm of the young for particular games, or an occasional Deadpool (the 2024 film a targeted success rather than a "4-quadrant" blockbuster that owes its profitability above all to an intense following which has been much more evident among a key demographic rather than mild across-the-board interest), but often a matter of smaller movies that a particular slice of the market really wants to see succeeding in getting them to the theaters and in the process turning a relatively big profit on a small gross, a pattern most familiar in horror, but evident in other genres as well, and often characterized by its not always abiding by convention and expectation (like, alongside Deadpool, the Blake Lively-starrer It Ends With Us, the $25 million production actually the sixth most profitable film of 2024 on Deadline's list). I declined to pick winners or losers at this end of the market, frankly because such things are harder to spot on the basis of the few details those of us outside the business are likely to know about next year's movies so far in advance--but also because so many of even the smaller films were just more remakes and sequels that "nobody ever asked for," with all that implied about a paucity of winners at least.

Now 2025 has run its course. Did this reading of what 2025 would be like actually hold up? Well, the year was indeed remarkable for underperformers at just about every level, with the superhero films from Captain America 4's Valentine's Day weekend release forward bearing out my view of their collective prospects--with this only further affirmed by how James Gunn's Superman and the MCU's Fantastic Four: First Steps got positive reviews and relatively high audience ratings (both those films enjoying scores of 90 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at this time), indicating that their underperformance could not be dismissed in the "Not superhero movie fatigue, just bad superhero movie fatigue" way to which Establishment commentators are so prone. I can also say that neither the latest Mission: Impossible nor Jurassic World films defied my expectations (the newest Mission: Impossible bettered its predecessor's series' low gross, but not by very much, while the latest Jurassic World movie testified to the long-run decline in the franchise's grosses), while I might add that if I did not say anything about Avatar 3 back in 2024 it also seems consistent with the picture I sketched. (The movie has broken the $300 million barrier domestically, and the $1 billion barrier globally, but its likely final gross still represents a big drop from what Avatar 2 managed, all as even that film's gross represented a big drop from the original's gross way back in 2009, even before we adjust the figure for inflation.) Meanwhile smaller-scale letdowns were evident across the map, in those sequels no one asked for, from the 28 Days Later, I Know What You Did Last Summer and M3GAN franchises in the horror genre, to the retreads of Karate Kid and Tron and Anaconda, all as through the fall entertainment news writers scratched their heads at how every weekend another one bit the dust.

Unmitigated successes were less conspicuous, especially when one gets away from, for example, the horror movies that succeeded (the Final Destination and Conjuring sequels, and present critical darling Zach Cregger), and the second half of the film adaptation of the musical Wicked (which did no worse but also no better than would be expected on the basis of the first half's reception the year before). Still, A Minecraft Movie's being the number one hit of the year (and also the lesser success of the Five Nights at Freddy's sequel) testify to the continued salability of video game-based movies, while if there was no breakout success of a more idiosyncratic kind on the scale of 2023's Barbie or Oppenheimer Sinners, a genre-bending period musical with an R-rating, undeniably did well (domestically at least, the North American success didn't really carry over to the international market), while F1: The Movie also has a claim to being a hit of a more idiosyncratic type, if less obviously so (in its, if a generic and even rather flat sports film narratively, affording a different sort of visual spectacle in its racing sequences from what summer blockbusters tend to offer these days). One may also point to the successes of anime-based Japanese imports (most obviously the latest Demon Slayer film), and the not dissimilar limited theatrical release of KPop Demon Hunters, as likewise testifying to the readiness of audiences to come out for something they find genuinely exciting. All the same, the successes fell well short of making up for the underperformances, with the result that the year ended with a North American box office gross far below what the analysts hoped--not just the $10 billion that theatrical industry magazine Boxoffice Pro described as the "best case" scenario, the $9.3-$9.7 billion they thought more plausible, or the $9 billion that was the more cautiously optimistic Deadline projection representing conventional wisdom, but 8.655 billion, dismay about which is ubiquitous at this time. ("Reaching pre-pandemic levels of box office is beginning to feel impossible" Ryan Scott laments--to which I answer, "Beginning?"). Also ubiquitous was the inevitable scapegoating as studio executives, as shameless as they are stupid, continue to whine about the effect of a far from airtight and ultimately failed strike from two years ago with their courtiers in the press relaying their shabby, mean-spirited charges and evasions of responsibility in the same uncritical fashion as the rest of their ever more disgraced profession.

Altogether it was so predictable, and remarking it so much a matter of repeating myself, that I was not tempted to write about it all during the year, just getting in a word now and then--while I actually wondered if I ought not wait until after the Oscars and Deadline's Most Valuable Blockbuster tournament too before getting in a say about 2025 as well, simply to have more that would feel worth saying. Still, I do think a few things can be said to make this assessment at least a little more nuanced than a big pile of "I told you so" (however much the crass and vulgar idiots in Hollywood's C-suites, and their courtiers in the entertainment press, deserve it)--and the reader can likely guess as to what those things might be from the movies I haven't mentioned yet. One thing that I think can fairly be said is that if tentpoles are suffering then it is the case that--when we consider the two big types of them--the lavish family films of the animated type (and live-action remakes of them) are holding up better than the splashy action-adventure superhero-spy-fi-space opera type. After all, if the year had major flops in Elio and Snow White it also had Zootopia 2, and Lilo & Stitch--and a lesser success in the live-action How to Train Your Dragon (perhaps because family animation is something rather wider than a "mere genre," and perhaps too because the very young audience all this is aimed at are the only ones who can't think "I've seen this all many times before"). It also seems the case that a battered Hollywood, after in rather high-handed fashion dismissing the Chinese market for many years (remember Galyn Susman's sneer at the country?) the Hollywood studios are pinning their hopes on China again, with Disney's Bob Iger making a rare international trip to China in advance of the release of Zootopia 2, helping pave the way for Disney's film grossing an extraordinary $583 million in that market (two-thirds again what it made in North America, figures to which Hollywood hasn't come close in that market since before the pandemic).

Still, otherwise Hollywood remains stupidly stubborn about adapting to the new market, to go by what I saw in the data last year trying to keep a tighter rein on spending, and now fight a little harder for that access to China they realize they really need, but otherwise stick to their standard operating procedure six years after the pandemic dealt their industry a blow from which it, like everything else in the world, has not recovered, however unadmitted the fact. Anyone in doubt about that is advised to check out what's coming our way in 2026--and 2027, when it seems that we can expect more superheroes (Avengers, Batman, Superman, etc.), more sequels to big animated movie franchises and live-action adaptations thereof (more Ice Age and Shrek and Frozen, more live-action How to Train Your Dragon), more animated superhero films (Spider-Man and the Turtles), more Star Wars and Lord of the Rings, more Universal Dark Universe creature movies and more of the Quiet Place series, and of course, more sequels and remakes of very, very old movies that likely mean little or nothing to the present generation (more Gremlins and Miami Vice, and even a second remake of The Thomas Crown Affair starring and directed by Michael B. Jordan because of all the things he could be doing now he chooses this). Amid all this I expect that the box office in 2026 and 2027 will be as underwhelming as it was in 2025, and that the discussion of the fact will consist of the same idiocies we have been hearing spoken these past many years as Hollywood's courtiers remain faithful to their task of telling the public what the industry wants them to say to it.