2025 was not a great year for the box office. Falling about in line with the disappointing 2024 box office. Much like previous years a handful of successes propped up a large number of flops. But movie theaters have a lot to worry about, especially with the pending purchase of Warner Brothers by Netflix. This years big winners at the box office include “Zootopia 2”, “Lilo & Stitch”, “A Minecraft Movie”, “Jurassic World: Rebirth”, “Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle”, and unsurprisingly “Avatar: Fire and Ash”. All of which drew in more than $700m globally. With $200m production budgets common for modern blockbusters, that means the break even point for a lot of movies is around $600m (Due to the theaters cut and Prints and Advertising costs). So $700m and above is usually a sign of solid profit.
The one exception with that is Avatar which costs so much it’s break even is around one billion. At the time of writing it hasn’t achieved that, but it is on track to join the only three movies to hit that point this year (“Lilo and Stitch”, “Zootopia 2” and the Chinese movie “Ne Zha 2”). The problem James Cameron has however is drop off. Specifically the drop off trend of the Avatar movies in general. See, James wants to put out two more Avatar movies and both will need over $1b to draw even, likely more knowing how ambitious Cameron is. That means if you track the drop off from the first to second to third you can estimate if a fourth or fifth movie is likely to be financially successful. That places the target closer to $1.8 billion. Currently, that looks achievable, but we will have to wait and see.
Bombs Away!
Box office losers this year includes all Marvel’s superhero offerings, all of which lost considerable money. Surprisingly Mission Impossible: Final Reckoning was also a narrow miss at the box office, entirely due to its inflated budget. A good lesson to learn is any franchise can run out of steam. Cruise wasn’t wrong to want a big send off though, so I wouldn’t call it a mistake. The movie was decent but could have been better. Other notable failures this year includes the pro-Antifa adventure “One Battle After Another”, the pretty solid John Wick spin off “Ballerina” and the horribly disappointing “Mickey 17”. On top of that a whole host of non superhero Disney movies including: “Predator: Badlands”, “Elio”, “Tron: Ares”, and of course Disney’s live action “Snow White”.
Disney’s year has about 3/10 for success. Good job for them their three hits are among the biggest of the year. There are a few debatable successes this year too. Probably the most debated is “Superman”. People debate if it is good, why it is or isn’t, if it is made or lost money and if Warner is happy with it. In my view, the movie is good. More objectively speaking the movie is a success. I know some will disagree, but we are very obviously in a period of superhero fatigue, marvel failed with every outing this year and DC has been on a long run of complete and total box office disaster. So being the number 3 film of the year for Domestic box office and blowing most of the recent DC movies out of the water (Everything but “The Batman” and it was close to that) can definitely be seen as a success. David Corenswet even got a collective thumbs up from all the audience, positive or negative.
When In Doubt, Scare Them!
While Hollywood struggles and superhero movies continue to sink, horror is once again thriving this year. “Sinners”, “The Conjuring: Last Rites”, “Weapons“, “Five Nights at Freddy’s 2” and “Final Destination: Bloodlines” all swept up at the box office. Meanwhile “Frankenstein” is looking like a strong contender for multiple Oscars. “28 Years Later” and “The Monkey” also did well (For their budget). It’s worth remembering of course with horror we’re not talking about these films hitting $1 billion or anything. The most successful horror of the year, “Sinners” made $367m globally, that’s less than the least successful Marvel movie this year. But it’s all about net profit. Horror costs very little and reliably makes profit.
A few lower budget horrors managed to garner a lot of hype this year, those include “Talk to Me”, “Together” and “Good Boy“. All solid offerings, if a little over hyped. Hype kings this year for horror were easily “Sinners” and “Weapons”. These are the big horror winners of the year and the nice thing here is those are both original. Also-Ran’s in horror include the sequel’s “Black Phone 2” and “M3gan 2.0“, both of which suffered for trying to radically shift the type of film. Meanwhile, condemned to a direc-to-streaming release was horror love story “The Gorge“. Last honorable mention here is “Clown in a Cornfield”. While mild in its success, it possibly sneaks in this year as a future cult hit.
My Top Ten Movies of the Year
So what movies did I like most this year? Time for a top ten. Before I start though, two movies that narrowly missed the list, yet are worthy of mention are: “Caught Stealing” and “Roofman”. Both good movies, worth checking out.
- Nobody 2 – An unnecessary yet fun sequel. At no time do you feel the heroes are at risk, but it’s fun watching them take apart a local crime syndicate.
- The Amateur – Remi Malek showing off his talent in this interesting revenge thriller. Not quite good enough to be a classic, but a good story and an original approach.
- Deathstalker – A cheap, fun fantasy movie that knows exactly what it is. From the makers of “Psycho Goreman” (2020) and “The Void” (2016). Technically a remake.
- Spinal Tap: The End Continues – While not the classic of the original, this was the film that got the most laughs out of me this year. Especially recommended for fellow musicians.
- Black Bag – British Spy thriller that spins a web while also focusing on the simple question of how do spouses that are both in the spy game ever trust each other?
- Weapons – My horror of the year. Not without flaws, but when it’s good it is really good. Plus, always nice to see scary witches for change (Instead of reduced to feminist symbols).
- Superman – Some may dislike me putting this in my top ten, but I really did enjoy the movie. It is my favorite Superman movie that doesn’t have Christopher Reeve in.
- Warfare – Easy to forget this one, yet it was a fairly unique and well made move about… well, warfare! Points for originality, being hard hitting and not time wasting.
- F1 – While this does do justice to the F1, it’s a story that could be set in any sport. Perhaps not the most original story, but it works extremely well!
- Frankenstein – My view on this movie has diminished since I realized how much came straight from Bernie Wrightson’s graphic novel adaptation. That said, it’s still my movie of the year. It looks fantastic and while it drags a bit, it ends strong.
Worst of the Year?
The advantage of not being a big shot critic is you don’t have to watch everything. As a result I’m not going to even try a bottom ten of the year. But I will note a few things I found particular disappointing. First of which, right at the start of the year was Blumhouse’s “Wolf Man“. A movie so bad, I had to watch another seven Werewolf movies to get the bad taste out of my mouth. It’s ironic that the star, Julia Garner also ended up in my top then. The next biggest disappointment was a movie I’d been looking forward to for a couple of years, “Mickey 17“. Perhaps I expected too much from Bong Joon Ho, but this was a science fiction movie that seemed to go out of it’s way to fail on everything it promised. The first act of the film was the only part of value and that was so heavily utilized for the trailers I felt I’d already seen it.
Another movie that disappointed me this year was “Fantastic Four: First Steps“. I’ve not been watching Marvel recently, but I heard from a few people this was good. I didn’t share that opinion once I watched it. As much as people like to claim they don’t, superheroes do need their origin story. It doesn’t matter how they got their powers, what matters is what defines them as heroes. When they skip it, the heroes don’t feel right. That’s the case here, sure they got the look sort of right, but the personalities and the dynamic between them was off. Add to that the story took a long time to kick into gear and this ended up a bad marvel movie.
Things That Aren’t Fantastic
Fantastic Four wasn’t the worst Disney film this year. But I did fully watch it. Tron: Ares I tried to watch, but it was so bad I walked away part way through. This is not Tron and the thing is with such long gaps between entries in this franchise the three movies couldn’t really feel less related. At least Legacy tried to tie things together, this movie doesn’t even feel like an attempt at Tron. Also, there’s no Tron in this Tron film. He had only a cameo in Legacy, but at least he was there. I had no interest in Snow White and haven’t watched it at all, but I must acknowledge the movie has become legendary for how bad it is. But even that must take a back seat to “War of the Worlds”, a movie that brought everyone together in their mockery of how bad it was.
Over to the world of TV, I have to express how disappointing this last season of Stranger Things has been. Season Four felt epic and cinematic. It more than made up for the slightly lackluster seasons 2 and 3. Season Four even felt like a series conclusion, right until the epilogue. But then with Season five they seem to be trying to reinvent the wheel. So much of this season feels artificial and forced and the biggest mistake on show is taking so many minor background characters and elevating them to the main cast. This has created an unfortunate character bloat that has diminished the roles of series favorites. More disappointing though was “Alien: Earth” that promised much, but delivered a wrecking ball to the franchise. Worst of all they reduced the Aliens to pet monsters.
Second Chance Saloon
So between the best and worst are a lot of things that may have either been given a bad rap or just slipped under the radar for most folk. First movie I feel the need to bring up is “The Running Man“. This movie suffered from some reviewers Arnie fetish and inability to see beyond a movie with Arnold in being about the man and not the story. The original story was by Stephen King and was very loosely adapted for the Schwarzenegger movie. It deserved a second version, especially given it’s been 38 years. Many didn’t give it a chance. Now, the movie does have issues but I had a lot of fun with it. Worth a chance on streaming in my view.
Another movie worth checking out is “Ballerina”, the John Wick spin off that just couldn’t stir up any interest. The film itself is actually pretty good. Not top ten material, but worth a watch. Unlike “Furiosa” (2024) this movie actually features the character the franchise is named after and in more than just a cameo. However it’s still a new character as the lead and it seems an odd decision to even make the film when the last two John Wick film went out of it’s way to build up characters that could be spun off. The movie also struggled with the stigma attached to female led action films. To put it nicely, too many of these movies are made purely for female empowerment, but that doesn’t sell itself to action movies mostly male audience.
Worth Viewing
A streaming movie I enjoyed more than I expected to was “Head of State”. John Cena and Idris Elba have good chemistry. While many were disappointed with “Electric State” and it definitely didn’t justify it’s budget, the movie is actually a solid family fantasy adventure and not a bad watch. Another movie that got slammed this year was “M3gan 2.0“, but I almost put that one on my top ten. I get the hate, the switch from horror/comedy to action/comedy was grating. I’m not sure I’d want to watch both movies together but I went in knowing the change and actually thoroughly enjoyed the movie. Give it a chance. Last movie to mention is “Locked” a very simple movie mostly featuring Bill Skarsgård locked in a car with Anthony Hoplkins taunting him. But those are two great actors and the movie is pretty decent.
Looking over to the world of television there’s less for me to talk about as I’m far more of a movie guy than a TV guy. However, I want to draw attention to the Japanese series “Last Samurai Standing”. This show went under most peoples radar but did manage enough of an audience to get renewed for season two. The story is a compelling blend of historic fantasy and gritty reality, with some very cool sword fights in between. I’d place the show part way between “Shogun” and “Into the Badlands”. I also thoroughly enjoyed the series “House of Guinness”, and not just because I’m a keen drinker of the stout itself. The show is edgy, compelling and mostly historically accurate (Well, more accurate than many shows anyway).
Happy New Year!
So that’s my wrap up. Before I sign off, here are some of the movies I’m looking forward to or I think may be of interest in general in 2026. I’ve put an asterisk on the ones I am most excited for. I’m only taking this list to July, after that schedules tend to change and those movies are yet to begin promotion.
- January: “We Bury the Dead”.
- February: **”Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die”.
- March: *”The Bride”, **”Project Hail Mary”, “Ready or Not 2: Here I come”.
- April: “Super Mario Galaxy”.
- May: “Mortal Kombat 2”, “The Mandalorian and Grogu”.
- June: *”Masters of the Universe”, “Supergirl”
- July: *”Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey”, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”
The movies I’m most looking forward to are “Good Luck, Have Fun, Don’t Die” and “Project Hail Mary”, both come fairly early in the year and have had very good trailers. However, so did Mickey 17 last year, so we’ll see if they live up to expectations. Anyway, that’s it for 2025. Due to the costs of running this blog, this may be the last year I do a wrap up so I hope it has been interesting, entertaining or ideally both. Happy New Year and may 2026 bring you joy and success! Be seeing you!
Oh and credit to “Nano Banana” for the AI images! Silly name, great image generator.