The 2025 Box Office Year in Review: Sydney and Timmy, Superheroes vs. Horror, and Studio Power Rankings

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1:16Esquire raves, it's hands down the best TV show of the year, and USA Today hails it an exquisite masterpiece. Beef for your Emmy Awards consideration. It is Wednesday, January 7th. It's the first week of January, so we're getting a year-end box office snapshot for 2025. Overall, not great. Most analysts had predicted at least$9 billion in total domestic box office, that's U.S. and Canada, which would have been fine. The total was regularly above$10 billion pre-COVID and topped$11 billion in 2019. This year, about$8.6 billion. Lots of reasons for that, but it always comes down to the number of big-budget studio movies in theaters, about 110, 111 wide releases this past year, and of course, weather audiences like those movies.

2:03We'll have the overseas numbers soon, but it's looking even worse there, especially if you take out Nezha 2, which grossed about$2 billion and almost all of it in China. There were big hits this year. Disney got to$6 billion on its own with the help of Zootopia 2 and Lilo & Stitch and Avatar 3, but it also released six disappointments. That's a lot. Universal rebooted a franchise with How to Train Your Dragon, and Warner Brothers went on that crazy streak this summer. Not so much for Paramount and especially Sony, though the Holiday Corridor is offering a good narrative for pretty much everyone, especially Sidney Sweeney and Timothee Chalamet, and the whole idea of a star-driven dramatic movie.

2:40Positive trend there. So many narratives, so we've got our box office guy, Scott Mendelsohn, here today to break it down. We're going to give grades to the studios and offer up our biggest surprises, biggest disappointments, and outright flops of the year at the movies, and what it all means for 26. From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany, and this is The Town.

3:04Okay, we are here with Scott Mendelsohn, who is a box office analyst. He has his own substack called The Outside Scoop, and he also contributes to Puck, where I work. Welcome back, Scott. Thank you very much. It's a pleasure to be back here. Thank you for having me. Happy 2026. We survived the movies of 2025. In some ways, that was the easiest thing to survive. Well, yes, you see them all, though. I do not see them all. You are a completist, and I respect that. You sat through them all. I don't want to name names. But I want to start with the overall picture here. Why did this happen? What do you make of the year at the box office, and why did it disappoint?

3:47Two reasons. Well, three, really. I mean, specifically, if Michael Mortal Kombat 2 and Saw 11 had opened in late September through late October as planned, might not have made up the entire difference, but it would have gotten pretty damn close. Okay, but we could always talk about titles. I mean, but then Weapons was moved into 2025 and it was supposed to be a 26 release. Generally speaking, there are still far too few movies on the regular. I mean, even summer, July of the summer, had six wide releases, one of which was Eddington, which I would argue wasn't relief about box office long-term.

4:27Again, you know, for the love of the game, blah, blah, blah. And you also had a bunch of quote-unquote franchise temples that would have bombed to the 2010s and were already spoiled, irrelevant, past their prime leftovers, the films of which did nothing to inspire, for those already not interested, excitement, like Smurfs. Like I know what you did last summer, you know, force awakens edition. Like, I liked it, but karate kid legends. Oh, don't get me started on karate kid legends. I still don't understand that one. Did you see it? Yeah, I did see that one. We didn't even see Daniel until like an hour into the movie.

5:03That's why it was great. Cause they, we've talked about as long as possible. We've talked about this. That was awful. Like I go to see fricking Danielson. He's not, he's not Danielson until an hour in the movie. that being said there are too many again you'd like too few movies and too many event movies like the running man yeah what a whiff running man and tron aries like that fall period from september october november that was rough and this is all garbage that would have bombed in the 2010s you think so you think running man would have bombed then you think snow white would have bombed pre-COVID.

5:39Yes. You do? I do. And it's not Rachel Ziegler's fault. You know, she might have cost that movie hundreds of thousands, possibly millions of dollars, but it's not the difference between what it made, which is what, about$200 million, give or take, and like even Cinderella numbers 520, 10 years ago. I don't know. I think that that movie did get hurt by the backlash. It just became tainted. And there were too many controversies. Little people and the casting and they were fake BS controversies, but like they did become a thing. And then the movie didn't quite deliver. And then it was like, Oh, whatever.

6:16We've moved on. I do think that Elio might've worked pre COVID or at least not, but it's a bomb for Pixar for sure. But it would have gotten into the four or 500 range. I think pre COVID. I agree. And there's, you know, We can spend the whole time talking about Disney 2010s versus Disney 2020s and what that was unforced error. One of that was, you know, self-sabotage. Heck, I think Elio would have done better had it not been delayed from early 2024. Yeah, they were so afraid of it. It wouldn't have been skin to the bone to avoid any, you know, Facebook controversy. Oh, no, Elio wears pink. He's gay.

6:58It's pedophilia, groomer, propaganda. which again, in the real world nobody gives a shit about that stuff. But it also would have been coming about six months after seven months after Elemental, which was a leggy, beloved Pixar original that sort of got people back in the game. And that one continues to perform on Disney+. But Elio getting to$150 worldwide, that's a disaster. That can't happen. It is. It's embarrassing. Especially considering, you know, it's interesting Disney went hard on the press release at the end of the year about hitting $6 billion in box office, which is the first time that's happened since COVID.

7:35And it's heavily weighted on Lilo and Stitch and Zootopia 2 with Avatar, of course, in there. But it really masks the fact that Disney released, by my count, six underperforming movies this past year. Elio, Snow White, Tron, Ares, and the three Marvel movies. Not great overall, but because of the portfolio, strategy. They had an outsized hit in Zootopia. Chinese people effing love it for some reason. Not some reason. It's very good. But for a movie like that to do $600 million in China, amazing. Yeah, it's nuts. But if you did a check-in on Disney this year, what kind of grade do you give them?

8:20B -. Because I mean, and I wrote about this, I don't know, maybe September before Freaking Friday came out. Which, by the way, Freaking Friday 150 on a 45 budget pretty good for a live-action comedy. Sure, yes. And proof that Disney can open and nurture a mid-market movie if it's pre-branded at least a little bit. Yes. Don't look to them for something original, but for pre-branded, they can do it. And for up until, you know, obviously November, they were riding on Lilo and Stitch and only Lilo and Stitch. And we all knew that Utopia 2 and Avatar 3 were going to be so big that it would paper over most of the deficiencies.

9:01Yeah. And frankly, it's entirely possible that next year we'll have the same thing with Toy Story 5 and Avengers Doomsday, you know, and Mandalorian. I don't think it's going to do Last Jedi numbers, but I think it'll do well. Let's do the superhero check-in. How do you feel the genre is going and the state of the superhero movie right now? Given Superman and given the three Marvel movies, Thunderbolts and Captain America, Brave New World, and Fantastic Four First Steps. Two things. First of all, just by virtue of Disney buying Fox and Sony being mostly out of the non-Spider-Man superhero game, we're going to see a lot fewer Marvel DC movies anyway than we did in the 2010s.

9:42Back when Venom was competition and Deadpool was competition. There's only three this year. There's the two DC movies, Supergirl and Clayface, and then there's Avengers Doomsday. Yes. That being said, it sort of blows my mind, well, not that blow my mind because SEO and all, But it bemuses me that superhero comic book movies, specifically Marvel DC, are still treated as like the bar for success. Well, listen, they've been the driving force of the box office for the past 15 years. Honestly, I would say they've been the driving force of the box office between 2016 and 2019. Because even like go back to 2015, you had Avengers, which was huge, Fantastic Four, which bombed, and Ant-Man, which did fun.

10:22I guess I'm thinking MCU. The MCU movies all did pretty well. And again, they were all doing very well, but it wasn't really until 2016 to 2018 through 2019 that it became a dominating, all-assuming, tentpole force. And I think now all we're seeing is sort of a return to the status quo, where a comic book movie like Captain America, The Winter Soldier could do very well in 2014, but globally it would still get its butt kicked by Transformers, Age of Extinction, and Hobbit, The Battle of the Five Armies. And that would be okay. The problem is, even in an ecosystem where every time a romantic comedy bombs, romantic comedies are doomed.

10:59Every time a Western underperforms, the Western is dead. And yet, we've had mediocre to pretty good results for most comic book movies since 2023, with periodic exceptions. Well, wait a second. The problem is these movies cost so much. Do you think Fantastic Four at$520 worldwide? You think Disney's happy with that? No. No, not at all. Well, I don't think they would have been happy with it, even if it was 170. Thunderbolts and Captain America not getting to more than 400, you think they're not happy with that? These movies are not made to break even. These movies are made to drive the studio slate, and they're not.

11:37Well, my point is that, you know, we say, oh, this genre is dead, this genre is dead, this genre is dead, and yet the punditry and or Disney is still acting like the glory days of 2016 to 2018 are just around the corner. And I'm arguing they're not. Yes, you're still going to have unto themselves events for popular franchises or characters like Batman, Spider-Man, Black Panther, Guardians of the Galaxy. That one's pretty much done, but whatever. They're never done. They're never done. You don't think Kevin Feige is sitting there at Marvel going, all right, how do we bring him back? How much is Pratt going to be?

12:10You know they're having those conversations. And the question is, is there a downturn if Dunn's not involved? Because I can't imagine Dunn's going to be involved. when he works for the rival company? No, probably not. Speaking of DC, though, let's talk about Superman. That movie got to 600. David Zaslav doing a little dance about how they relaunched the DC universe. Great. Good for them. They can incredibly make Supergirl and more of those movies, but I think they wanted more out of that. It's their marquee franchise. It's the one. I know Superman has been a tough sell in the past, but this was the one they put all their eggs in that basket, and I think they wanted more out of it.

12:49Overseas, I think we're in a situation that overseas box office in general is less reliable than it used to be, not just in China. Right. Or closer to 50-50 for most movies, I would say, as opposed to what used to be like 40-60, give or take. And Superman has never been big overseas with the exception of Batman v Superman, give or take. This film did very well domestically, I will argue, considering it was coming off a... Again, the reception and the reviews and the buzz were a lot closer to Batman Begins than The Amazing Spider-Man. And that's where you want to be. Now, does that mean that people, general audiences, give a damn about DC Studios and are excited about, oh boy, another DC cinematic universe?

13:30No, but I would argue they didn't care the first time. All right, so let's do a horror check-in now. We had a pretty steady stream of horror movies throughout the season. you know, Blum came on this show to talk about why Megan 2 didn't work. But then by the end of the year, he's got Five Nights at Freddy's 2. He's got The Conjuring sequel, which was a huge hit via Atomic Monster. Where are we with horror? Is it still the most reliable genre? Well, yes, it is still the most reliable genre. None of this horror is weak now. Horror is going the way of comedy and drama. It was never. I mean, even in the dark times of early 2024, it was a matter that was no longer punching above its weight on the regular.

14:15And that original horror films were a slightly harder sell than, you know, during the boom times of 2022, 2023. Seems like branded horror is the model. Like, to get to those numbers, you need a Final Destination, you need a Conjuring, you need a Five Nights at Freddy's, which is a well-known brand. And it seems to be a little harder at the studio level to break the original horror movies. Yes, but we did have two of the very biggest R-rated original horror movies ever just this year with Weapons and Sinners, relatively speaking. I would call those elevated horror, or at least they were marketed.

14:53They were certainly not slasher movies. Don't get to say just because they're good, they're not real horror movies. I don't know. I saw Sinners, and I don't see horror movies. Well, you know what? A lot of people probably saw Get Out that didn't see horror movies. That's a horror movie. Okay. All right. But that is also a tour. Sinners cost about$100 million. So that's not the normal horror model. Chapter 2 costs$70. Note costs$70. And yes, that is not normal. Normal is weapons, which cost about$38. And it still did$250,$260 worldwide. That's why Zach Craig can write his own checks now. Because he's doing the model that the studios want to do.

15:31And it is encouraging that in terms of branding, some of that branding is the filmmaker. And if Resident Evil actually pops at the end of this year, it will be more because it's the guy that made Weapons and Barbarian than, oh boy, another Resident Evil movie, but not like the ones that you liked in the 2010s. Yeah, although it helps that it's a brand that people have heard of. Less marketing required to tell you what it is. as far as Blumhouse, I mean, and this is a difference of opinion. I don't think conjuring should count toward their year end total. Oh, how dare you? You're going to get a strong rebuke from Jason Blum.

16:06I know they, they bought the company or they merged with the company. I know, but it's, and again, I am just as cranky about, you know, in Disney Fox, what counts to what kind of thing. I don't want to say stolen valor, but. You know what though? They all buy these companies like universal has the minions movies, not because they develop minions, but because they have a financial stake in Illumination. So they get it. But Despicable Me was a universal movie from the start. And again, if and when Atomic, Monster, and Blumhouse start releasing more movies that are original or weren't huge when they weren't separate, then we'll talk.

16:42Just like, even though it wasn't a huge hit, I think Predator Badlands was aspirational for Disney because that's the first Fox franchise that I will argue got better after Disney bought them. Yeah, but I don't think Badlands ended up being very profitable. No, but again, it's not that big of a hit. All of the good buzz in the world didn't get anyone that wasn't otherwise interested into the theaters. We see that every once in a while with something like Power Rangers or Dungeons and Dragons, where it's like, it's a great, wonderful version of something that I still have no interest in. Yeah. All right.

17:15Your surprise hit of the year. There were lots of movies that I expected to succeed that went bockers bananas, like Sinners, Niza 2. Most of the Warner Brothers sleep from April to September. But Chainsaw Man the movie made$43 million domestic off a$17 budget. Which A, is really leggy for an anime movie. And B, it's one of the biggest domestic grossing anime pictures ever. Obviously behind the very high grossing Infinity Castle, with a lot less buzz and free publicity. It's true. Big year for anime. Gotta say it. We did a whole show on it. between that and K-pop and all of it. Yeah, it is no longer niche.

17:56It has been accepted as mainstream. I think it counts in terms of what Sony puts out in a theatrical year. I think it counts toward what Sony puts out in the animated ecosystem in a given year. And that can only be a good thing because even if they average out to Chainsaw Man numbers domestically, if you get three or four or five of those, that's 200 million in money that you wouldn't have expected a few years ago. Yeah, they got to lean in on this. like anime is here for kids my age anime is their superheroes you mean the age of your i'm sorry yes for children the age of my children right so no i get i know i don't understand why these companies aren't investing more disney needs a strategy for anime they really do i know they have some stuff overseas but they really need to get into this all right surprise miss of the year there was that stretch in you know september october when it was one after another the star driven bombs like christy and smashing machine and uh you know after the hunt and all of these big movies you know any of those actually surprise you that they missed one and the other ones i will say absolutely not it's ridiculous for us to pretend that in years after the secret in her eyes bombed for stx that somehow uh after the hunt was gonna be this big blockbuster mgm amazon all right well wait a second they did have julia roberts in a luca guadagnino movie like you'd think there would be some kind of audience in her eyes.

19:20Okay, I know, but you spend$70 million on a Luca movie with Julia Roberts. You think that there might be more than $10 million worth of box office out there. And that's why they need to call me before they put those checks. Again, this is not talent. Julia Roberts is a wonderful actress, and as far as I know, a lovely human being. I've never met her. As far as you know, it's not true. She's not very nice, but whatever. Keep going. Fair enough. But one huge problem is because Hollywood so horribly failed and over the last 20 years in making new movie stars, we're still relying on people that peaked in the 90s and 2000s.

19:55Yeah, but you know what? She did the Clooney movie and it did fine. The Return to Paradise or whatever it's called. And even that, like we knew 30 years ago that Julia Roberts in unfun movies aren't box office. I'm the only person on earth that liked Mary Riley, but I'm the only person on earth that was in the theater that opening weekend. All right, that's a deep cut there. All right, so your surprise miss is what yeah by the way that was ticket to paradise not thank you craig that was ticket to paradise not returning yes yes the only movie in that new york times article that always star power dead or whatever that was actually a surprise was smashing machine yeah big miss i was expecting numbers on par with wayne johnson's free superstar vehicles i'm thinking stuff like faster and snitch and you know just a movie vehicles that he would still pilot to halfway decent money on realistic budgets.

20:43Yeah. Now we've talked about this. They screwed up the marketing on that. They took it to Venice and presented it as this big prestige movie and they should have just tried to get his audience to show up opening weekend, marketed it like a mid-budget Dwayne Johnson movie rather than an Oscar contender and it just whiffed. The other thing, and you mentioned this, I think, when it came out. But like, as somebody that liked many of Dwayne Johnson's 2010s big movies, I think Rampage is the best video game movie ever made. Oh, you do? I do. Again, I didn't see that one. It's a lot of fun. And again, it works whether or not you give a damn about VIP.

21:22Yeah. San Andreas is my favorite rock movie. I thought that was great. I love a good earthquake movie. And up until this year, it was the last wholly original live-action Hollywood movie to top 470, even 470 worldwide, let alone beyond. F1, of course, did the thing this year. Is F1 the biggest win of the year? No, because it's not going to help anybody. It is going to help. It's going to help every filmmaker that wants Apple to release their movie in theaters because now they can say, I've got the next F1 for you. And if you want to have a big summer movie hit, then you should buy my movie for an exorbitant price.

22:00You are more in the know than I am on a day-to-day basis. Is there any reason to assume that Apple is being more aggressive and optimistic about theatrical releases before F1 than they were? After fly me to the moon, because I don't see any traction in that sense. They're doing another Joe Kaczynski movie. And that one does have a theatrical commitment. So they are willing to do it. If F1 had flopped, I think then they would have washed their hands of the whole theater experiment, but they are willing to do it for the right project or so they say. So, and I think that, I think that was important.

22:38Yeah. But until I see Apple being like, you know, frankly, like Amazon in terms of throwing out a lot more stuff in theaters come hell or high water, at the end of the day, F1 is only good for F1. And that's fine. What do you mean? It's 600 million bucks. Not bad. Warner's got a distribution fee out of that. Brad Pitt gets to be a movie star again. And if they get bought up and swallowed by Netflix, who gives a damn? No, I know. I know. We don't have to talk about that. But big win for Brad Pitt on that one. I mean, that's his biggest box office of his career, not adjusted for inflation. Yeah.

23:12And again, it's great for F1. It's great for everybody involved with F1. But I'd be happier about it if Apple was being more aggressive for theatrical. And frankly, if Warner Brothers wasn't in peril of being Thanos snapped into oblivion for no particular reason, frankly.

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24:35Manage your activity with our consumer protection tools. Give me your Great Legs Award. The movie that legged out. Sinners, right. Got to be Sinners. I mean, it barely opened bigger than Snow White, yet it came within about$10 -$15 million of earning more sans inflation than The Sixth Sense and Inception. Right. Any good runner-up for that one? Sinners is obvious. Any good runner-up? The movie that we may not have realized how much it made? I think we're going to have some big ones out of the holidays. I think the Housemaid is going to end up over$200 million worldwide. Amazing. I think Marty Supreme could end up around$150 million, which query whether that's enough on a$70 million budget.

25:19But I think that the holiday movies are going to keep going during this fallow period. Yes. Housemaid, normal rate of descent suggests around$225 million worldwide on a$35 million budget. and with all the is sydney sweeney box office poison nonsense we have to deal with this year because oh no americana a movie you've never heard of didn't make money and oh no i'm eaten another movie you've never heard of didn't make money guess what movie's gonna make three times more than the running man i know i know and uh she's done a lot but like lucas said on the show this is the kind of movie in housemaid that people want to see her in they don't want to see her looking terrible in a boxing movie and getting her face beaten in.

26:01Which is why it should not count as a test of her star power. When you put movie stars in non-movie star vehicles, they should not be expected to pull movie star box office. Yeah. Although Timmy seems to be doing it in Marty Supreme. That is not an all-quadrant movie, I would argue. Well, Bones and All was not a flop, but it only did like 21 worldwide, give or take, which is fine for that movie. But again, that's very different than Waka, Dune, Marty Supreme, or even Zendaya with Challengers. I don't expect Zendaya making a quote-unquote art film to do what Challengers would have done. But yeah, Marnia Supreme, I mean, yes, it's probably the most aspirational, give or take the housemaid release of the holiday season, if not the year, just because I'm not saying he's the next Tom Cruise in terms of like bankability, but in terms of his single-minded, I will throw myself off every cliff on earth to sell this movie and make sure that you are excited about this movie and, and this is key, I will talk about nothing else other than the movie.