What a difference a few blockbusters make. When the first quarter of 2025 concluded at the end of March, total North American box office for the year stood at $1.5bn (according to data provider Comscore), 11.8% down on the tally for the first quarter of 2024.
Two months and a handful of impressive openings later, the domestic total had hit nearly $3.4bn by the end of May, 26% up on the tally for the same period last year.
After such a dramatic swing, Comscore is now predicting a $4.2bn summer season (the period from the first weekend in May to the Labor Day holiday at the start of September), which would be only the second $4bn-plus summer — after 2023’s Barbenheimer-fuelled $4.09bn — since the pandemic.
The box-office turnaround began in early April when A Minecraft Movie opened with a huge $162.8m North American gross. Warner Bros/Legendary’s video game-based action comedy, at press time topping the year’s chart with $423m, had the benefit of a PG rating and nostalgia appeal. But it was the enthusiasm of teen and pre-teen boys, whose ‘chicken jockey’ antics in cinemas drove viral buzz, that really ignited interest. Those middle-school boys, says Warner Bros president of global theatrical distribution Jeff Goldstein, “got middle-school girls, then they got older boys, and before you knew it you had everybody”.
Two weeks after A Minecraft Movie, a different kind of audience turned out for Warner’s Sinners, propelling the R-rated horror to a $48m opening. Glowing reviews, the pairing of writer/director Ryan Coogler and star Michael B Jordan, and Imax upcharges (with the large-screen format providing 20% of the opening gross from only 12% of venues) gave the film enough staying power to reach $267m by the start of June.
Five weeks after Sinners, the Memorial Day holiday weekend offered a double debut that drove box office for all films over the four-day span to a record $330m, beating the previous peak set back in 2013.
Lilo & Stitch, Disney’s live-action version of its 2002 animated hit and spin-off series, opened with a four-day take of $182.6m, a Memorial Day weekend record made particularly impressive by the PG entry’s relatively modest $100m budget and the fact it had once been slated as a streaming premiere.
The family comedy was a case of IP whose value has increased over time. “There was a lot of love for the franchise,” says Walt Disney Company head of global distribution Andrew Cripps. “You can see it in the merchandising sales that have grown over the years, and in the hundreds of millions of hours that people have spent on Disney+ watching the original movie and the series.”
Paramount’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning provided the Memorial Day counter-programming, opening with a franchise record $79m that proved the Tom Cruise-led series could still perform in its eighth instalment (even if recouping a reported $400m budget will be a challenge).
The adventure thriller’s rousing action, solid reviews and a worldwide publicity jaunt by Cruise and the cast “all rolled up into one must-see big-screen entertainment”, says Chris Aronson, Paramount Pictures president of domestic theatrical distribution.
Longevity, both in a franchise and in a theatrical run, has been a significant factor in the box-office rebound, suggests Comscore senior media analyst Paul Dergarabedian. The Memorial Day weekend, he says, “was the result of several weeks of overperforming films that set the stage”.
“The most important metric now isn’t necessarily the opening weekend box office,” argues Dergarabedian, “but the long-term playability of films.”
The audience’s appetite for family titles has been another factor. PG releases made up half of the year’s top 10 at the start of June and in addition to A Minecraft Movie and Lilo & Stitch, family entries performing well have included DreamWorks’ animation Dog Man and late-2024 holdover Mufasa: The Lion King.
The exception to the trend has been Snow White, whose $87.2m North American total suggests that Disney’s live-action remake strategy will not always produce a box-office bonanza (perhaps, in this case, because of the age and tone of the animated original).
The value of familiar IP has been made clear too. Almost all of the year’s top 10 films so far have come with some kind of built-in recognition. A Minecraft Movie, Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible aside, Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts* have shown there is still life in the Disney/Marvel superhero universe, and Warner’s Final Destination: Bloodlines quickly overtook all six previous entries in the horror series.
Original, non-franchise films have been few and far between. Sinners has proved that originality can produce a big pay-off, justifying what many had seen as a risky $90m production budget — and following hot on the heels of A Minecraft Movie, making Warner Bros Pictures Group CEOs Michael De Luca and Pamela Abdy much more secure in their posts.
The year’s other successful originals include Sony Pictures’ breakout comedy One Of Them Days ($50.1m in North America, from a budget reported at $14m), and also 20th Century Studios’ thriller The Amateur. Warner’s Bong Joon Ho sci-fi comedy Mickey 17 (based, like The Amateur, on a little-known novel) turned out to be a pricey underperformer.
Building momentum
The question remains, will the spring and early summer box-office jolt bring the North American marketplace back to blooming life on a permanent basis?
Paramount’s Aronson says the boost is not illusory. “I don’t want to say this is fool’s gold, because it’s not. It’s gold,” he acknowledges. “It does not, however, mask the underlying problems facing the theatrical marketplace — that we’ve lost 15%-20% of pre-Covid frequent moviegoers.”
Still, distributors mostly agree the momentum created in April and May should help releases over the next few months attract sizeable audiences. “Moviegoing begets moviegoing,” says Warner’s Goldstein. “When you have the kind of interest we’re now seeing in the marketplace, that makes us smile.”
First to benefit could be the studio tentpoles dominating the summer. “There’s a lot of good content that people are excited about,” notes Disney’s Cripps of the release schedule, “and, as importantly, it’s spaced out across the summer.”
Recognisable IP will once again be the draw for a number of summer contenders. June brings Lionsgate’s John Wick action spin-off Ballerina and Sony’s long-awaited horror sequel 28 Years Later. In July, Universal’s Jurassic World: Rebirth, the seventh entry in the franchise, will land, followed by Warner’s Superman reboot and Sony’s slasher I Know What You Did Last Summer. Paramount’s legacy sequel The Naked Gun and Disney’s Freakier Friday both offer comic relief in August.
The studios will be looking to keep family audiences engaged in June with Elio, an original Pixar animation from Disney, plus Universal’s live action How To Train Your Dragon and Paramount’s animated Smurfs.
Originals will again be thin on the ground, with the big play (other than Elio) coming in June, when Warner revs up Apple Original Films’ Brad Pitt vehicle F1: The Movie.
Later in the year, studios and independents will turn their focus to potential holiday season blockbusters and more specialised awards season contenders, among them the likes of 20th Century Studios’ Deliver Me From Nowhere, Universal’s Wicked: For Good, Disney’s Zootopia 2 and 20th Century’s Avatar: Fire And Ash.
If the momentum created in April and May continues long enough to benefit both the summer schedule and the holiday offerings, the North American market could find itself celebrating a very notable year.
Even before A Minecraft Movie, in late March, UK film data specialist Gower Street Analytics was predicting the 2025 North American box office would reach $9.5bn, 8% up on 2024 and the biggest total since the last pre-pandemic year of 2019 (though still 17% down on the average of the last three pre-pandemic years). Since Memorial Day, however, Comscore has upped its domestic prediction to $10bn, and the company’s Dergarabedian is even more optimistic about 2026 and 2027. “Barring anything unforeseen,” he says, “we’re really on a roll.”
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