Whatever happened to the mantra “survive until ’25,” the go-to refrain for theater owners and Hollywood executives trying to remain optimistic when the box office kept slumping last year, with revenue lagging well behind pre-pandemic levels?
Perhaps the mantra disappeared this summer when it became clear that not even the likes of Superman or even bigger and scarier dinosaurs could save the day. As the summer season wraps on Sept. 1, Hollywood is facing the worst-case scenario: May to Labor Day ticket sales in North America barely matched the $3.67 billion collected in 2024, even if the deficit was only $7 million. Piling in on, Universal and Amblin’s rerelease of Steven Spielberg’s 50-year-old Jaws beat two new studio films domestically over Labor Day.
All had assumed this year’s summer lineup would have the strength to equal or surpass the $4.09 billion grossed in summer 2023. But it isn’t to be, leaving studio execs and exhibitors in a state of shock as they wrestle with how to operate in a new world order where moviegoing might never return to pre-COVID levels. (One studio that’s still smiling is Warner Bros., which has been a dazzling winning streak.)
“I’m very, very nervous for the future,” says one top studio executive. “There are all these studios and companies making movies. I don’t think there is enough of an audience for them.” That is not a sentiment theater owners or many other studios share — they think the solution is more product delivered to their big screens.
The season certainly started off with a bang, but grosses took a nosedive in the latter half as the life raft once provided by the foreign box office nearly deflated and a glut of male-skewing tentpoles battled for scraps. In North America, Disney’s live-action Lilo & Stitch and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning fueled a record Memorial Day weekend. Lilo took in $182 million during the four-day holiday on its way to becoming the only 2025 title so far to cross $1 billion at the global box office. Mission: Impossible opened to a franchise-best $79 million domestically for Paramount. The late-May bloom resulted in domestic revenue being up 25 percent year-over-year, but the downhill slide soon started.
“Since June 13, we’ve had just one up weekend, which was July 11-13 when Superman opened,” notes Comscore chief box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “And beginning July 18, the domestic box office has been down every weekend for six weekends in a row.” The result: The year-over-year, much-needed advantage has diminished to a mere 5 percent.
David Croyé’s consulting and research firm JustWatch Media, which monitors trailer campaigns and moviegoing habits, found that weeks ago only 25 percent of people said they’d prefer to wait to see a summer movie on streaming, a healthy sign. In more recent days, however, that number shot up to more than 36 percent. He says this hits mid-size movies particularly hard, as well as being a major reason why the sheer number of people going to the cinema may never equal pre-COVID times.
“I don’t think the studio system will fill the gap that started from the pandemic,” says the founder and CEO of JustWatch. “It’s not as mass a market anymore. It’s about an even smaller group of people going to the movies more often. So there’s a lot more streaming and watching at home.”
Mission: Impossible was among numerous tentpoles competing for male eyeballs in the U.S. Before the pandemic, a studio could rely on the foreign box office to make up for any lost ground stateside. China alone could pony up $100 million to $200 million, if not more, in receipts. These days, a Western title is considered a hit if it earns $50 million at the Chinese box office.
Take Tom Cruise’s M:I franchise, whose movies have always been popular in China. This summer, Final Reckoning took in a stellar $65 million for a foreign cume of $400.6 million and $598 million globally. Yet that pales in comparison to the $181 million grossed by Mission: Impossible — Fallout in 2022. That film’s foreign haul was $604 million for a worldwide total of $824 million.
Jurassic World Rebirth also prospered in China, earning nearly $80 million there as part of its global total of $887 million. But that’s nothing compared with the $261 million earned by Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom in the pre-pandemic era (the 2018 movie grossed $1.3 billion globally).
Studio insiders say a raft of other markets in Asia have soured on U.S. movies as local content flourishe. That includes South Korea and markets across Southeast Asia. One startling example: Hollywood titles used to make up 50 percent of the box office revenue in Vietnam; now it’s just 14 percent. The downturn has hurt superhero pics in particular, explaining the lackluster offshore performance of Marvel’s Fantastic Four: First Steps and DC Studios’ Superman.
In 2024, six of the top 10 highest-grossing studio movies earned 60 percent or more of their total earnings from the foreign box office. This year so far, that number is three out of the top 10. That’s a far cry from pre-pandemic 2019, when eight of the top 10 studio films hit that threshold. Superman films have always been a tough proposition because of the comic book character’s pro-American legacy. But even Man of Steel earned nearly 57 percent of its $670 million global haul from the foreign box office. This summer’s Superman? A mere 43 percent.
The overall downturn at the foreign box office — which extends beyond Asia — in terms of the appetite for Hollywood pics helps explain why Lilo & Stitch has been the only 2025 title so far to cross $1 billion worldwide. It’s the first time since 2021, when the pandemic was still ranging, that at least two films haven’t reached this milestone by the time summer was over, including Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine last summer. Lilo, thanks to being known IP and a family film, was able to play well across the globe. And pics targeting parents and kids are doing record numbers in Latin America, such as Lilo or DreamWorks Animation and Universal’s The Bad Guys 2.
Regardless of where summer revenue lands, there were plenty of highs and surprise hits, including Warners’ Weapons and F1: The Movie, the Formula One pic from Apple Original Films that had already broken numerous records before pulling off the biggest surprise of summer in passing up Superman on Aug. 27. “While the overall numbers came in lower than expected, it would be unwise to conflate this less than expected outcome in terms of revenue with the quality of the movies,” says Dergarabedian. That, however, may be cold comfort to execs tasked with drawing up theatrical slates
Summer Box Office Heading into Labor Day
