Tom Cruise, Superman and Avatar hold keys to 2025 box office

LOS ANGELES – Hollywood superstar Tom Cruise takes on what may be his final Mission: Impossible, a new Superman will wear the red cape and the record-setting Avatar sci-fi series will return to movie theatres in 2025.

Those films and more are giving cinema operators hope that the long recovery from the Covid-19 pandemic will continue in 2025.

Five years after the start of the health crisis, movie-going has not fully rebounded. Box-office receipts totalled US$8.6 billion (S$11.4 billion) in the United States and Canada in 2024, 25 per cent below the pre-pandemic heights of US$11.4 billion in 2019.

The film industry was disrupted again in 2023 when Hollywood writers and actors went on strike.

“That complex matrix of film-making – where everyone wants the best talent, actors and sets – it takes a long time to get that running again,” said Mr Tim Richards, founder and chief executive of Europe’s Vue Cinemas. “2025 is going to feel the tail end of that.”

Top names in the movie business will gather at the annual CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas early in April to talk about the state of the industry. The conference draws executives from Hollywood studios and multiplex operators such as AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Cineworld, as well as owners of single cinemas in small towns.

At the Academy Awards on March 2, Anora (2024) film-maker and Best Director winner Sean Baker delivered a “battle cry” for film-makers, distributors and audiences to support cinemas.

“The theatre-going experience is under threat,” the 54-year-old said, noting that the number of screens shrunk during the pandemic. “If we don’t reverse this trend, we’ll be losing a vital part of our culture.”

Mr Shawn Robbins, director of Movie Analytics at Fandango and founder and owner of Box Office Theory, said the movie business was adjusting to “a new normal”.

“Event movies are increasingly drivers of the business,” he said. “There’s even more weight on their shoulders in terms of box-office dollars.”

Moviegoers still turn out for big-budget films, he said, but have shown they are happy to wait to watch others at home.

“It is common knowledge that a lot of movies will be available to stream within three to eight weeks, whereas it used to be a minimum of three months,” he added.

Avatar as tipping point?

Among the big hitters coming to cinemas in 2025 are Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning, a movie that may be Cruise’s last appearance in the long-running action franchise that started in 1996.

“One last time,” he says in the trailer. The film will debut over the US Memorial Day weekend in May, along with Walt Disney’s live-action version of animated classic Lilo & Stitch (2002).

Brad Pitt, another Hollywood superstar, plays a Formula One driver in the June release F1, and in July, Warner Bros will release its new Superman movie directed by James Gunn and starring American actor David Corenswet.

From Marvel, the anti-hero team Thunderbolts* will kick off the summer movie-going season in early May, followed by The Fantastic Four: First Steps in late July.

Around the November and December holidays, offerings include the second part of musical box-office phenomenon Wicked, animated sequel Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire And Ash, the third film in Canadian film-maker James Cameron’s Avatar series (2009 to present).

The first Avatar in 2009 is the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the second movie, Avatar: The Way Of Water (2022), ranks third.

Mr Robbins projected 2025 would end with a slight increase in North American box-office receipts compared with 2024, “maybe flirting with US$9 billion”. He said it is unclear when ticket sales will return to pre-pandemic levels.

Mr Richards believed the new Avatar would kick off “an extraordinary three to five years” for cinemas.

“We’re going to see (Avatar) as the tipping point,” he said. “2026 has got an extraordinary number of great films.” REUTERS