Why The Summer 2025 Box Office Was A Major Step In The Wrong Direction

The box office journey was over the past years, but for many in this industry, his saying appeared around 2023: “Stay until 2025”, or something like that. Basically, the theater owners and Hollywood studios witnessed in 2025 as a real moment to return to the industry after the Covid-19 and Hollywood strikes for 2023, where SAG-Aftra and WGA had a hunger strike for several months. Unfortunately, the summer did not bring ’25 with the wealth it promised on paper.

According to Variety, the local summer box office will not reach a sign of $ 4 billion, despite the previous predictions indicating that this will happen. From writing these lines, the summer season brought more than $ 3.5 billion, but with a weak list in August that will be renewed by the likes of “The Toxic Avenger” and “Roses”, there is no opportunity to compensate for approximately $ 500 million between now and over the weekend on Workers’ Day (which is considered the summer cinema season).

The threshold of $ 4 billion has been crossed only once since 2020, when theaters around the world were forced to close their doors because of the epidemic. This happened in 2023 when he saw the Parbinherere phenomenon, “Barbie” and “Obenheimer”, up to horizons that could not be understood at the box office. In the end, “Barbie” has made more than $ 600 million locally and $ 1.4 billion worldwide, with “OPPENHEIRER” 310 dollars domestic and about one billion dollars across the planet. The summer of 2023 also witnessed an unexpected escape such as “Sound of Freedom” ($ 182 million), and with a lesser extent but not less important, “Talk to Me” ($ 44 million). However, this decreased from 2019, at which time its ticket climax with ticket sales of $ 4.38 billion.

Unfortunately, Summer ’25 has seen much more disappointments than surprises. “Lilo & Stitch” from Disney is only Hollywood, a billion dollars this year, after she earned a shy of $ 422 million locally. The second place is “Superman” by James Gan (347 million local dollars/605 million dollars worldwide).

The biggest problem is that many films that, on paper, have been set to make goods less than expectations. The most prominent of which is, “Thunderbolts*” ($ 190 million/$ 382 million worldwide) and “The Fantastic Four: First STEPS” ($ 257 million local dollars/$ 490 worldwide) are much less than we expected from the Marvel brand. In fact, even “Superman” (in northern $ 600 million worldwide) proves that super films are no longer the automatic events that must be seen by the audience.

Then there is “ELIO” from Pixar, which achieved $ 73 million locally and $ 152 million worldwide, making it the least profitable Pixar movie. In contrast, last year, “Inside Out 2” achieved $ 1.69 billion, and briefly became the highest animated movie in all times. That was until the Chinese “Nezha 2” seized the crown with an amazing amount of $ 2.15 billion so far. However, the vast majority of this money came from China, as the American fans were largely indifferent to the film although they had a great actor of the English language version released in the United States by A24.

Even tremendous successes such as the “Guessing Global Girl” ($ 844 million worldwide) achieved nearly 60 % of their money abroad. In other words, the big strikes there were not to raise the local box office as much as the theater owners and Hollywood studios were hoping. Certainly, we had the sudden “KPOP Demon Hunters” that tops the vehicles for $ 19.2 million, but this is relatively small in the large plan for things, and it was certainly not enough to compensate for the largest films this summer.

It is sad to say, all this takes what we reach to get to know the new usual film works. A recent report revealed that the box office may not fully recover from the epidemic, while leaving the ticket prices to compensate for declines in the total sales. It is a new fact that both theaters and Hollywood will have to adapt to both theaters. It seems that the summer days of $ 4 billion are normal behind us.