Will Summer 2025 Save This Year’s Dreary Box Office?

Up until the release of A Minecraft Movie and Sinners, you could have asked any box office geek how the 2025 domestic box office was going, and you’d inevitably receive morose facial expressions and misery-laden groans. As of March 25, 2025, the North American box office had only grossed $1.31 billion. In contrast, the “first quarter” (meaning the first three months of the year) grossed $2.4 billion in 2019, $2.91 billion in 2017, and $1.73 billion in 2001. Excluding 2020, 2021, and 2022, you’d have to go back to 1996 to find a worse Q1 domestic box office performance. It’s dreadful numbers from every angle.

Major studios abandoning the release of new movies (particularly ones that aren’t R-rated action/horror films) has drained the marketplace. While past Marches were anchored by Zootopia, Alice in Wonderland, and Beauty and the Beast, March 2025’s biggest new releases were Snow White and Novocaine. No wonder the marketplace was slumping. However, does summer 2025 pose hope for salvation? Surely the lucrative summertime season can save a domestic box office landscape that’s in dire straits right now … right?

Hollywood’s biggest problem in early 2025 has been abandoning young audiences. It’s been an issue for the entirety of the 2020s, with major studios choosing to finance and/or distribute new motion pictures starring Kevin Costner, Mark Wahlberg, and Joaquin Phoenix instead of finding new stars that can resonate with younger moviegoers. Even though youth-skewing movies (and ones with large young women fanbases to boot) like Five Nights at Freddy’s, Barbie, and Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour saved the 2023 box office, Hollywood is still dedicated to placating die-hard moviegoers from the 1990s.

Looking ahead to summer 2025, the biggest possible hits are the ones that both skew younger and toward women. Remember how Inside Out 2 dominated summer 2024 while, in the same season, It Ends With Us outgrossed more expensive tentpoles like The Fall Guy. Lilo & Stitch, for instance, is tracking excellently largely because it’s based on source material that young people love, versus more arcane Disney properties like Snow White. June’s romantic drama Materialists has the potential to become a sleeper hit that could buoy the marketplace. M3GAN 2.0 could also strike a major box office chord with that same demographic.

Unfortunately, two years after Barbie, there are few women-skewing movies or non-sequel features on the horizon for summer 2025. While Hollywood will scramble to mimic digital 3D’s success or make Transformers carbon copies, Barbie, “mysteriously,” hasn’t inspired many imitators. Instead, this season is hinging on very creaky franchises to carry the day. Yet another Karate Kid legacy sequel/remake is heading to theaters, while Mission: Impossible will close out its espionage saga after 29 years on the silver screen. The John Wick universe is expanding into spin-offs with Ballerina, while How to Train Your Dragon is going live-action.

Over the last few summers, unexpected original successes like Oppenheimer, Barbie, Elvis, Nope, Where the Crawdads Sing, and Free Guy have proven critical to the 2020s summer box office landscape. To boot, they’ve outgrossed costlier tentpoles like The Suicide Squad, The Flash, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga, and other movies that may have seemed like “easier” sells on paper. Original films terrify executives because they’re unpredictable, but within that unpredictability, you get surprise hits like Longlegs. Taking chances on these titles in the summertime marketplace—and not forgetting moviegoers under 40 exist—is key to a robust 2020s box office landscape.

Unfortunately, so far, summer 2025’s slate is worryingly devoid of such audacious swings that could produce the next Nope or Oppenheimer. Instead, the seventh Jurassic Park installment and a Naked Gun reboot are on the horizon, seemingly designed to tantalize the nostalgia of older moviegoers. These projects may look good in a PowerPoint meeting for shareholders, but they’re not ideal for carving out a healthy summertime box office. Plus, there’s still a dire shortage of new theatrical releases, period. July 2025, for instance, only has seven new wide releases on the docket for the entire month. July 2018, meanwhile, had room for nine movies that immediately debuted in wide release. July 2016 had a whopping 13 motion pictures premiering in 600+ locations.

Potential big hits like Lilo & Stitch, Jurassic World: Rebirth, and Superman might help mitigate this dearth of theatrical newcomers. However, currently, summer 2025 seems to be suffering from the same problems that plagued the first few months of the year. Chiefly, this season has too few new movies and an overabundance of projects skewing older than the younger audiences who actually love going to the movies. Throwing in a deluge of past-their-prime brand names like Smurfs coming back to theaters only suggests there could be even greater problems on the horizon for this moviegoing season.

Hollywood’s bad at learning lessons, but it’s becoming bizarre how much the major studios are ignoring reality. Even in a landscape where Anora nearly matched Kraven the Hunter’s domestic box office haul, these entities are still hedging all their bets on bloated, overly costly blockbusters stroking the nostalgia of older moviegoers. Summer 2025 could have some significant box office high points, which would be a boon to theater owners everywhere. Perhaps even a handful of original summer 2025 titles that still lack firm release dates (namely Highest 2 Lowest and Eddington) could break out and become this season’s equivalent to It Ends With Us.

A Minecraft Movie and Sinners absolutely exploding over April certainly bodes well for theaters, at least. Exposing these moviegoers to standees and trailers for summer 2025 titles like Thunderbolts and F1 can only help get people to return to their local multiplex in the weeks ahead. Still, early 2025’s box office blags might not vanish even once the weather gets hotter outside. The season relying on such tired franchises as Smurfs and Karate Kid is an ominous sign for what’s ahead. The systemic rot informing 2025’s dismal initial box office numbers is greater than just seasonal auras or audiences greeting Novocaine with a shrug. As long as major studios keep emphasizing titles like Karate Kid: Legacies over One of Them Days, movie theaters and audiences will suffer.