It’s still very early days, but 2025 has made a promising start, at least for films that are carrying over from 2024. The strong performance of Wicked, Moana 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Mufasa: The Lion King through the Holidays and into January between them added over $200 million to the update to our annual prediction in late January.
Subscribe to The Numbers Business Report for that update and a full set of predictions for films planned for release this year. Read on for an overview of how our model thought 2025 will shape up in movie theaters, as of January 24…
While January’s new releases hadn’t done terrific business, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera and One of Them Days had both hit their marks (and Dog Man out-performed expectations after our update). The sheer volume of new wide releases through the month meant the year has started out ahead of 2024.
Very soon, eyes will turn towards Captain America: Brave New World, which has seen a good pick-up in interest over the past month, according to our audience model, and now looks as though it could hit $300 million domestically. While that wouldn’t be record-setting for the franchise (Captain America: Civil War opened with $179 million and
ended with $408 million domestically), it would be reassuring after the disappointing performance of The Marvels in late 2023. Along with Thunderbolts*, which is due in May, that will finish Phase Five of the Marvel Cinematic Universe (if you’re still keeping count).
The other films we’ll be looking at closely in the first half of the year include Snow White, which is set for March 21, and is getting high marks from the model; A Minecraft Movie hits screens on April 4; and the Memorial Day weekend has a double-header, with Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning and Lilo & Stitch hoping to find their respective audiences.
Having six films with a good chance of earning $200 million or more come out before June means the first half of the year could see $800 million or more extra earned at the box office compared to 2024. If we’re going to see a $10-billion year, we probably need to do a shade better than that.
The model’s measure of market strength has returned almost to normal over the past month, helped by those good performances over the Holidays. Our underlying assumption remains that the market is at 85% of its pre-pandemic strength, and the current market strength very nearly hit that number at the beginning of January.
The knock-on effect of that is that the model assumed a slightly stronger market going into February, which boosts box office expectations across the board for the month. Also helping the market prediction this month is the addition of several films to the Q4 schedule. While we expected the calendar to be filled in, the films that were added have made a positive contribution to the overall analysis.
As usual, we’ll be updating the prediction each month in The Numbers Business Report, and reporting soon after here on The Numbers.
For more details on what’s driving the market, predictions for all movies through the end of 2025, and more, subscribe to our full report.
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Bruce Nash, bruce.nash@the-numbers.com