A few days into August, I told you that 2025 was the year of box office flops, with Superman and Marvel’s Fantastic Four leading the way, and now the trades are playing catch-up and confirming exactly what I first said.
On Thursday, THR published their own article titled, “The Summer Box Office Is Quickly Turning South.”
The article discusses how it was hoped that the summer of 2025 would match the success of 2023, which featured films such as Barbie and Oppenheimer. But Comscore (a media measurement and analytics company) now projects just $3.75 billion for summer 2025 — 8% behind 2023’s $4 billion haul, proving this year’s tentpoles couldn’t keep up.
The Summer Tentpoles Weren’t Enough
This summer was supposed to be saved by Jurassic World Rebirth, James Gunn’s Superman, and Marvel’s Fantastic Four. Instead, only the dinosaurs somewhat overperformed. True, Jurassic World Rebirth technically did well, but it came nowhere near Jurassic World and is even short of Dominion, giving it the lowest-grossing of the franchise. Domestically, Superman beat it.
Even THR notes that Superman, while seen as a solid player, only cleared $600M worldwide (as of this weekend), numbers that pre-pandemic superhero films would’ve doubled with ease.
Now it’s just hoped 2025 matches 2024.
The Big Hits (And That’s About It)
As I previously said:
- Minecraft ($955M) and Lilo & Stitch ($1B) were huge.
- Everything else? Not so much.
Jurassic World: Rebirth, which is a horrible film, is doing good numbers ($829.8M), but it’s 50% below the first one, 36% below the second one, and around 20% below Dominion.
- 28 Years Later flopped hard and lost $75M.
- Snow White ($205.6M), Cap 4 ($415M), and Thunderbolts ($382M) are flops, which Disney confirmed.
- Fantastic Four is flopping hard at $472.6M, which even THR confirms: “The Marvel movie quickly lost it groove.” That collapse helped drag the late-summer box office down 11% compared to 2023, wiping out earlier gains from Minecraft and Lilo & Stitch.
- Elio also majorly bombed for Disney ($150.6M).
- Ballerina bombed ($133.8M).
- Mickey 17 bombed ($133M).
- Karate Kid bombed ($110M).
F1, Mission Impossible, and More
Everybody has been raving about F1, but at $595.5M, just as I said, yeah, it’s a flop. THR tries to frame it as a win, pointing out that Apple is celebrating $600M, but in today’s blockbuster economy, that’s far from a true success, especially if its break-even number is really $750M. It’s also not doing well domestically (and Apple is raising the price of Apple TV+ right in time for the streaming release — good luck).
Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning? $594M. Flop.
And here’s the kicker: this is the first summer since the height of the pandemic when no Hollywood movie even cracked $600M domestically. Not one.
A Few Exceptions
In addition to Minecraft, Lilo & Stitch, and Jurassic World Rebirth, there are a few exceptions that also did well:
- How to Train Your Dragon did decent ($618M worldwide) at least.
- Final Destination: Bloodlines crushed it with $285.3M on a small budget.
- Weapons, another low budget horror movie, is doing well, with $167.4M.
My favorite movie of 2025? Sinners. Awesome movie ($365M). However, it went absolutely nowhere internationally ($87.3M) and did cost around $100M.
The Bottom Line
As Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian admitted in THR’s article: “Summer 2025 will match or exceed 2024, but the margins are crazy thin. I am more shocked than anyone else that we’re not going to resoundingly surpass the $4 billion collected in 2023. I guess $4 billion is a tougher threshold than we thought. And it took a Barbenheimer to do it.”
2025 is officially the year of box office bombs.
