We have finally glimpsed the two biggest movies of 2025. That’s because, in the last two weeks,Disneyreleased trailers for Zootopia 2 andAvatar: Fire and Ash.
Those movies don’t seem to have much in common, aside from their shared Disney parentage. One is a buddy cop movie for kids set in a city of anthropomorphic animals; the other is a sci-fi action epic that serves up visual splendor as casually as Marvel movies serves up quips. But Avatar and Zootopia will have a similar effect: defibrillating the 2025 box office in the nick of time.
2025 Is Lagging Behind Recent Post-Covid Years
2025 has been a weirdly down year for the box office so far, despite theaters offering a wide variety of big-budget movies. By this time in 2024, two of the year’s billion-grossing movies,Inside Out 2andDeadpool & Wolverine, had already hit theaters, with onlyMoana 2waiting in the wings. This year,only one Hollywood movie has made it past that milestone, the live-action Lilo & Stitch adaptation.
Only oneHollywoodmovie.China’s Ne Zha 2 has earned $2 billion, and that’sbeforethe A24 English dub hits theaters on August 22.
Inside Out 2 and Deadpool 3 soared past the billion mark, ending their runs with $1.699 billion and $1.338 billion, respectively. Despite his famously manic energy, though, Stitch barely managed to crawl across the line. More than two months in, the family movie has stalled out at $1.019 billion. Similarly, in 2023, both billion-grossers (Barbie,The Super Mario Bros. Movie) had already hit theaters by this point.
That hit schedule makes sense. Summer tends to be the biggest season for movie-going. Kids are out of school. Families are looking for something to do to kill time. Everyone is drawn to air conditioning like moths to a flame. Hollywood plans its release schedule accordingly, filling theaters with its most expensive spectacles from May to July.
August tends to be a quieter month, which makes sense, since kids start returning to school.
Hollywood followed that same playbook this year. This summer has been packed with would-be blockbusters: Lilo & Stitch,Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Karate Kid: Legends,Jurassic World: Rebirth, F1: The Movie,Superman,The Fantastic Four: First Steps,How to Train Your Dragon,Ballerina, Smurfs,28 Years Later, Elio, and more. Some of those movies have done surprisingly well — F1 is Apple’s first real theatrical success — but most have stalled out long before reaching a billion.
Do We Need To Lower The Bar?
It’s enough of a trend that Hollywood observers are starting to question whether a billion is still a viable benchmark. Box officeanalyst Scott Mendelson arguedthat there are dangers in $1 billion being the mark of blockbuster success.
Mendelson notes that just four movies passed that milestone between 2003 and 2009. That many movies passed the billion mark in 2012 alone, as 3D and IMAX became more widespread. 2019 was the moment we crossed the rubicon, though, as nine movies made more than a billion dollars worldwide.
That was the culmination of half-a-decade of success, with 25 movies reaching that level of success between 2015 and 2019.
Mendelson points out that, since the pandemic began this level of success has become rare again. A lot of this has to do with the collapse of superhero movies, which were once a sure thing at the box office. Joker: Folie a Deux and The Marvels, sequels to billion-grossing hits, were notorious flops and the eagerly-anticipated Superman and Fantastic Four likely won’t come anywhere near a billion.
The end of 2025 has two sequels to billion-grossers waiting in the wings, neither of which will be the victim of that trend. Family films like Zootopia 2 are as strong as they’ve ever been. The Super Mario Bros. Movie was the second highest-grossing movie of 2023. Inside Out 2 and Moana 2 were the highest- and third-highest grossing movies of 2022. So far, the two highest-grossing movies of 2025, Lilo & Stitch andA Minecraft Movie, are family films, too. While nothing is a sure thing in 2025, family films (especially sequels) are as close as it gets.
The first Zootopia made over a billion worldwide back in 2016. That previous success, and the length of time between films, means that the movie is likely to benefit from the same demographic headwinds that boosted Inside Out 2 and Moana 2. These movies are targeted at children, but will also bring in the teens and adults who were kids when the originals hit theaters — a phenomenon we saw with 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru, which was elevated by the “Gentleminions” TikTok trend.
Zootopia 2, regardless of quality, will likely sail past a billion.
Avatar: Fire and Ash also has the benefit of being a sequel to a billion-grosser, but in this case, it’s the sequel totwoof the biggest movies of all-time. The firstAvatar earned nearly three billion at the box office, and The Way of Water was no slouch either, with$2.32 billion when all was said and done.
When a movie is the sequel to not one, but two, of the three highest-grossing movies of all-time, it would take an unheard of collapse to not crack the billion mark. Unlike Superman, whose gross has been incredibly domestic-heavy, Avatar is a huge global franchise. Avatar: The Way of Water made $245 million in China alone, with huge takes in other countries, as well. Avatar 3, like Avatars 1 and 2, is going to be huge.
This means the year will, likely, close out with two billion-grossing movies in quick succession (though Avatar’s December 19 release date means that much of that gross will come in the new year). We don’t need to lower our expectations for blockbuster films. 2025 isn’t going to be a worse year than 2023 or 2024. It will just take longer for it to get there.
