Kryptonite is messing with summer box office.
Heading into the start of the season, hopes were running high that Hollywood would make a roaring comeback and be able to best or at least match the $4 billion-plus earned in 2023 at the domestic box office when the combination of Barbie and Oppenheimer turned into a cultural phenomenon.
The 2025 May-to-August calendar was certainly promising on paper in terms of marquee tentpoles, led by James Gunn’s Superman reboot, Jurassic World Rebirth and The Fantastic Four: The First Steps (only the dinos overperformed).
And April and May were so strong that even while the month of June was down more than 12 percent, the full second quarter of the year was up a stunning 37 percent over the same frame in 2024, thanks to April’s pre-summer offering A Minecraft Movie and the summer’s first tentpole hit, Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch, which opened opposite Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning. Lilo and Paramount’s M:I fueled a record Memorial Day weekend, prompting year-over-year revenue to a momentary 25 percent spike that still held at a solid 16 percent gain the next month thanks to Fourth of July’s Jurassic World Rebirth.
From there, a roller-coaster ride ensued. By the end of the Aug. 15-17 weekend, year-over-year revenue was down 6 percent amid a slowdown in event titles. Worse, it lagged more than 11 percent compared with 2023. The late-summer box office was counting on Fantastic Four to carry over into August in a major way. Instead, the Marvel movie quickly lost it groove.
And whereas most had predicted that summer revenue would certainly catch up with 2023’s $4 billion, that’s now out of the question. Comscore is predicting roughly $3.75 billion-plus, a 2 percent uptick from 2024, when late July tentpole Deadpool & Wolverine saved the late-summer corridor by opening to $211 million on its way to raking in $1.33 billion globally. Pixar’s Inside Out 2 also cleared the $1 billion mark in summer 2024, grossing north of $1.66 billion. Still, if the $3.75 billion figure holds, that would be 8.4 percent behind 2023.
This summer, Lilo & Stitch is the only film to become a member of the billion-dollar club. Other than that, Jurassic World Rebirth, from Universal and Amblin, has come the closest, with more than $828 million in worldwide ticket sales.
“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,” says Comscore chief box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “I guess $4 billion is a tougher threshold than we thought. And it took a Barbenheimer to do it.”
Case in point: While Warner Bros.’ Superman has been considered a solid player, its major milestone is crossing the $600 million mark worldwide. Pre-pandemic, a marquee superhero pic could easily hit $1 billion. Apple Original Films F1: The Movie is likewise getting ready to celebrate $600 million — a giant feat for a car racing pic.
Or, put another way, this is the first summer in recent memory — except for the heart of the pandemic — when not one Hollywood movie crossed $600 million domestically, or $500 million for that matter. (Where are the Avengers when you need them?)
Dergarabedian, though, remains an optimist: “The rebound in 2025 has been nothing short of miraculous given that the first quarter was down a full 12 percent versus 2024 and the full month of March was down 46.1 percent versus March of 2024. And even in early July, revenue was running 16 percent ahead year-over-year.”
This story appeared in the Aug. 20 issue of The Hollywood Reporter magazine. Click here to subscribe.
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