Movie Preview: July 2025

We’ve arrived at the highest grossing month at the domestic box office, historically speaking. And we have three mega-hits lined up that should help 2025 properly align with history.

Quickly looking back at June, though, you might remember that in my intro to last month’s post, I noted that in 2024, May earned $550.3 million at the domestic box office, while June rebounded with $965.9 million. After this year’s summer started very strong with $967.6 million, coming close to doubling the previous May, I didn’t want to make any solid predictions, but I was feeling vibes that things might flip-flop. And while things didn’t completely bottom out in the realm of a $550 million month, I was more or less correct as June wound up with $813.1 million. “How to Train Your Dragon” soared high, earning over $200 million domestically by the end of the month, but it was the May holdovers in “Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” that slotted in next as most of the June releases didn’t pull their weight. The second highest grossing June release was “F1,” which actually did very well with a $57 million opening, much higher than I was thinking. But that only occupied the final few days of the month. “28 Years Later” did very well in compared to the previous franchise entries, but wasn’t necessarily a horror breakout hit on the level of “Final Destination: Bloodlines.” Meanwhile, “M3GAN 2.0” and “Elio” were straight-up flops, while “Ballerina” opened on the lower end of the John Wick franchise.

But yes, that leads us to July, where the quantity of releases is quite low. But that’s because, as mentioned in the start, we have three mega-hits lined up and the other studios have decided to not spend a whole lot of effort competing with them. Those three movies are “Jurassic World Rebirth,” “Superman,” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” We’ll do a deep dive into each of them to see what the potential is, but it’s mostly just those three movies this month, with a few smaller ones scattered in between. So let’s get going!

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

July 2 – 6

Universal's "Jurassic World Rebirth"

It’s Independence Day week here in the United States, with the 4th of July falling on a Friday. That should lead to strong grosses across the board, especially with holdovers like “F1” and “How to Train Your Dragon” getting continued business. But the lone new wide release is the first of our trio of mega-hits and that is Jurassic World Rebirth. This is a movie that technically qualifies as a sequel to “Jurassic World: Dominion,” but is more of a soft reboot. Chronologically, we’re five years after “Dominion,” but we’ve essentially said that Earth’s environment proved inhospitable to the dinosaurs, so the remaining ones have gone back to living on the tropical islands, which is basically the filmmakers choosing to undo all the events of the previous trilogy and take the franchise back to its roots – dumb humans being chased by dinosaurs on a remote island. And of course this movie has a group of scientists on a secret mission to dino island, although the cast is completely different, returning no one from any of the previous six movies. The new cast is led by the trio of Scarlett Johansson, Mahershala Ali, and Jonathan Bailey. The movie also was written by David Koepp, who wrote the screenplay for the first two Jurassic Park movies in the 90s and hasn’t been back since. Hired on as director is Gareth Edwards, director of “Rogue One” and “The Creator,” as well as 2014’s “Godzilla.” So on paper this has a lot going for it, ditching the much maligned previous few movies, bringing back the original writer, and having an all-star cast and directing team. Will that successfully attract people in swarms to the theaters for Independence Day week?

The answer to that is that it’s quite likely. Although initial reviews are splat down the middle, with a less than encouraging 52 percent score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes. For the sake of comparison, “Fallen Kingdom” earned a 47 percent, while “Dominion” got a 29 percent. So technically in increase in the percentage of positive reactions, but not enough to even match the 72 percent of “Jurassic World.” Rounding it out, it falls in line with “The Lost World” (56 percent) and “Jurassic Park 3” (49 percent). So beyond the classic first movie, this is a franchise that has failed to provide consistent positive reaction and at some point one would think franchise fatigue would start factoring in if they can’t make a movie that everyone enjoys. For the sake of box office comparison, both “Fallen Kingdom” and “Dominion” had similar openings in the realm of $145-150 million after “Jurassic World” exploded onto the scene in 2015 with a $208 million opening, an all-time record at the time, beating out 2012’s “The Avengers.” Adjust that number for a decade of ticket price inflation and you have a staggering $280.1 million opening. And even when you adjust the original trilogy for ticket price inflation, the-numbers.com’s inflation adjusted tool pegs those at $137.0 million, $177.7 million, and $101.5 million, so 30 years of dinosaurs has proven to continue to draw people to theaters, despite consistent mixed reactions to all the sequels. “Rebirth” opens on a Wednesday, being the first in the franchise to do so, so there’s not a perfect direct comparison here. But opening somewhere between the adjusted opening of “Jurassic Park 3” ($101.5 million) and “Dominion” ($145.1 million) is the generally expected, although that will be spread across the extended five-day opening.

July 11 – 13

Warner Bros.' "Superman"

After the first weekend of July sees “Jurassic World Rebirth” as the lone new wide release, this second weekend of July also sees our second mega-hit get the weekend all to itself and that is James Gunn’s Superman. For the casual movie-goer, the question might arise of “Why do we need another Superman movie?” And the answer to that can get quite long and complicated, depending on how deep you want to dive into the weeds of the DC Universe. The short answer is after the Snyder-verse came crashing down (the DC Extended Universe primarily ran by Zack Snyder), DC is again starting over, this time handing the reigns over to James Gunn, director of Marvel’s “Guardians of the Galaxy” trilogy, as well as DC’s “The Suicide Squad” (the 2021 version) and the HBO Max series “Peacemaker,” a spin-off show from that movie. While the latter two weren’t mega-hits financially, the quality was high enough for Warner Bros. and DC to give him the keys to the car to reboot the whole universe his way. And James Gunn has decided to start off with a Superman movie, casting David Corenswet as his new Superman and Rachel Brosnahan as Lois Lane. James Gunn also has Nicholas Hoult as Lex Luthor, Edi Gathegi as Mister Terrific, Anthony Carrigan as Metamorpho, Nathan Fillion as Guy Gardner from the Green Lantern realm, and Kendra Saunders as Hawkgirl. So Gunn’s version of Superman is a Superman who exists in a DC World where many of the other characters already exist rather than it being an origin story. And lest you think this is too many characters from one movie, a potentially valid concern, might I remind you that this is the guy who did “Guardians of the Galaxy,” so balancing a lot of characters while showing a deep love and appreciation for the comics is definitely his thing.

Will this movie work out? Well, folks at Warner Bros. and DC certainly hope so. There’s a lot riding on this when it comes to the future of DC. And James Gunn certainly has a lot of work to do in re-establishing good will when it comes to DC movies. Audiences are also growing more tired of comic book movies in general as even Marvel has been met with a lot of criticism in recent years as people grow tired of their formula. So there’s definitely an uphill battle to climb, especially as the remaining Zack Snyder fans won’t stop pestering this new DC and casual fans might not be the most pleased with all of this as the answer to why a new Superman movie is necessary. But despite all that, the buzz here has been mostly positive, so it seems James Gunn is one who is up to the task. What does that mean financially for this movie? Well, we’re establishing slightly new ground with a reboot of the whole universe, but the last time Superman got his own movie was “Man of Steel” in 2013, which opened to $116.6 million. The high in that DCEU was “Batman v. Superman,” which opened to $166 million. Box Office Pro doesn’t have their long range forecast out for this yet, which is a disappointing to me as they used to do 6-8 weeks in advance, but some sources on the internet claim this is tracking for an opening around $130 million, which would put it in the realm of “The Batman,” which opened to $134 million in 2022, making $369.6 million total domestically, which feels like a valid comparison. New Batman. New Superman. Lastly, “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3,” James Gunn’s most recent comic book movie entry, opened to $118.4 million, finishing with $358.9 million domestically. So there’s a few points of comparison to look at.

July 18 – 20

Sony’s "I Know What You Did Last Summer"

No mega-hit scheduled for this weekend. The last of those movies from this month will be in the final weekend of July. Meanwhile, while audiences wait for the big Marvel movie, this third weekend of July presents an interesting trio of movies to hold them over. The first of those is yet another horror franchise revival with the release of I Know What You Did Last Summer. So far each month of the summer has had one of these horror franchise revivals, both being rather successful, with May’s “Final Destination: Bloodlines” and June’s “28 Years Later” becoming the new highest grossing movie in their respective franchise, opening to $51.6 million and $30 million, respectively. Can we make it three for three here? The original “I Know What You Did Last Summer” opened in 1997 and was a slasher flick that centered around a group of teenagers getting stalked by a hook-wielding killer one year after they covered up a car accident in which they killed a man. The movie spawned two poorly regarded sequels (1998 and 2006) and a TV show in 2021 that got canceled after just one season. So that doesn’t bode particularly well for this new movie. The plot here follows a new group of teens who are going through a situation that’s almost identical to the original incident, so they search out the original survivors for help, which qualifies this as a legacy sequel, even going the “Scream” and “Halloween” route of using the exact same title as the original movie. The question here is can this be another horror breakout? The original two movies in the 1990s both opened to around $15 million. Press the inflation adjusted button and that translates to just under $40 million. Does this franchise have enough cultural relevance to pull that off? Or are we in for an opening that falls closer to the unadjusted openings of the first two movies?

Depending on which way that goes, the fight for the highest grossing new entry of the weekend will be between that and another franchise revival, this one going for family audiences with Smurfs. As a franchise, the Smurfs have been around since the late 1950s, getting their start in a series of comics. Since then, there’s been a variety of different TV shows and movies involving the Smurfs that have kept them relevant across many generations, most recently being the trio of movies from the 2010s, as well as a third TV series that started up in 2021 over in Belgium. The plot of this one feels awfully familiar. Papa Smurf has been kidnapped by the evil wizards Gargamel and Razamel. And now Smurfette leads the rest of the Smurfs on a mission to the real word to save him. So like the 2011 movie, we get a live-action and animated hybrid. And it wouldn’t be smurfing without some smurfs singing and this movie is pushing heavily the fact that Rihanna is Smurfette and has written original music for this movie. Not sure your 5-year-old cares about new music from Rihanna or the long list of voice actors that have been conned into doing this, but this does have optimal timing in that family audiences haven’t had a new movie for them in about a month at this point. The 2011 movie opened to $35.6 million and topped out at $563.7 million worldwide, so the ceiling here is pretty high. Although each of the two sequels saw diminishing returns, with “Smurfs: The Lost Village” opening to $13.2 million in 2017. So there’s quite a bit of range of possibilities for both this movie and “I Know What You Did Last Summer.”

There is a third movie coming out this weekend, although it’s a movie that’s poised to open up quite a bit further down than the others and that is the fourth movie from director Ari Aster, Eddington. As a director, Ari Aster began his career by directing two fairly popular horror movies in “Hereditary” and “Midsommar.” Anyone who is a fan of indie horror might bring up one or both of these in recommending original modern horror movies to other people. Aster’s third movie, 2023’s “Beau is Afraid” was quite the different animal. His goal was seemingly to one-up himself in regards to intense content, which he definitely accomplished, for better or for worse. The movie itself was quite divisive. And was also not horror. It might better be classified as a psychological drama or even a dark comedy. With his fourth movie, was Aster going to go back to horror and tone things down a bit? Or was he going to make another movie that’s closer to “Beau is Afraid”? Well, early word out of the Cannes Film Festival, where this movie debuted back in May, is that it’s closer to “Beau is a Afraid.” It’s also not a horror movie, it stars Joaquin Phoenix, and is a COVID-centric movie set in May 2020 in the town of Eddington, New Mexico, following a stand-off between a small-town sheriff and the mayor, sparking a major conflict in the whole city. Seem like a movie that general audiences will be interested in heading out to? Likely not. It’s listed as a wide release, although “Beau is Afraid” started in four theaters before then expanding to 965 theaters and eventually 2,125. It’s peak weekend saw it earn $2.6 million. Regardless of strategy here, it’s not likely to be a huge earner.

July 25 – 27

Marvel's "The Fantastic Four: First Steps"

In the last weekend of the month, it’s time for the third and final mega-hit of the month, which sees the arrival of the Fantastic Four in the Marvel Cinematic Universe with The Fantastic Four: First Steps. This will officially be the 37th movie in the MCU, which of course began in 2008 with “Iron Man” and it arrives at a time where Marvel is having a slight bit of an identity crisis. They need a new face for this current era of the Avengers in a post Endgame world and they’re hoping that the Fantastic Four can provide that. This current movie is set in the 1960s in a retro-futuristic parallel Earth that is poised to have a major Galactus problem as his Herald, the Silver Surfer, comes and relays the news that their planet is marked for death. It’s up to the Fantastic Four to try to save it. In the realm of film, this is a franchise that’s had quite the cursed reputation as none of the films have really been well received. The 2015 movie, “Fant4stic,” is widely seen as one of the worst comic book movies ever made. However, the IP was previous owned by Fox, which means that Disney and Marvel got the rights back in 2019 when Disney purchased Fox. So if there’s anyone who can save this franchise and do it comic book justice, the MCU proper seems like the correct ones to do it, because the Fantastic Four comics are one of the more popular comics out there in the Marvel realm. To bring this crew to life, Pedro Pascal, Vanessa Kirby, Joseph Quinn, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach have been cast as the Four, with Julia Garner as Silver Surfer and Ralph Ineson as Galactus. Plans have already been made for this crew to play a major role in next year’s “Avengers: Doomsday,” as those who watched the end credits scene of “Thunderbolts*,” or the cast announcement video of “Doomsday” will be well aware of.

What will that translate to in regards to box office? Well, after the strikes threw them off their groove in 2024, and the two releases so far in 2025 have been fairly moderate in regards to box office success, Marvel is really needing a win here. Despite all the post-Endgame criticism from fans, Marvel was actually on quite the streak with six straight movies opening above $100 million, that going from “Spider-Man: No Way Home” in December 2021 through “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” in May 2023. That streak ended in November 2023 as “The Marvels” became their first major flop, which was followed by the strikes throwing off their 2024 schedule. Even with that, though, “Deadpool & Wolverine,” their lone release of 2024, became a billion dollar hit and their second highest-grossing non-Avengers film worldwide, behind just “Spider-Man: No Way Home. But so far in 2025, both “Captain America: Brave New World” and “Thunderbolts*” opened below $90 million ($88.8 million and $74.3 million), so they’re hoping “Fantastic Four” can be the one that puts them back above the $100 million mark for opening weekends. A little bit unknown territory with this being the first time the MCU has done Fantastic Four. And plenty of competition with the previous two mega-hits (can we really have three $100+ million openings in one month?), but if this does well, it has a similar late-summer slot that “Guardians of the Galaxy” did in 2014 that helped it go from a $94.3 million opening to $333.7 million domestically. Nothing huge in August to stand in its way.

One final quick note on the month is that “Fantastic Four” does get a companion film released on the same weekend. Not a movie that’s remotely going to be any sort of competition, but horror fans who don’t want to see the latest Marvel fan have the option of seeing IFC Entertainment’s latest horror film House On Eden. This movie is the latest team-up of IFC and Shudder, IFC doing the theatrical release prior to it eventually heading over to the Shudder streaming service. We talked about this last month with “Dangerous Animals,” but other horror films in this realm include “Stopmotion,” “Late Night with the Devil,” “In a Violent Nature,” “Oddity,” “Azrael,” and “The Rule of Jenny Penn.” Some of those being wide releases, others being more limited or moderate releases. “Dangerous Animals” last month ended up opening in 1,636 theaters and earned $1.6 million that weekend. It got dropped from most of its theaters after just two weekends, though, and is currently sitting at just $2.7 million. That’s probably the upper range for “House On Eden.” It could very easily be a movie that’s in just a few hundred theaters rather than something that starts in over a thousand. The movie itself is about a group of paranormal investigators out hunting their latest evil spirit, so pretty basic for the horror genre at this point. It’s also done “found footage” style. We haven’t seen one of those in a while because that subgenre died off, which means this movie is probably about 10-20 years too late, but it’s still an option. Either in theaters or a bit later on Shudder.

Movie Preview: June 2025

After a slow start to the year, the box office has officially caught fire the last two months. April managed to be a good primer for the summer movie season, which then led May to kick off the summer with a bang. A record breaking Memorial Day weekend led the way, with both “Lilo & Stitch” and “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” doing very well. We went from one of the worst Memorial Day weekends in 2024 to one of the best in 2025. Top that off with “Thunderbolts*” doing decent Marvel numbers to start the month off – albeit not quite as much as they maybe wanted, along with another $123 million in May for April’s breakout hit “Sinners,” as well as a $100 million outing for “Final Destination: Bloodlines” as that became the highest grossing movie of that franchise by quite the margin. “Karate Kid: Legends” missed the memo that we’re supposed to all be doing well, but even with that failure, the month as a whole nearly managed to hit $1 billion, finishing at $967.5 million domestically. For comparison, last May only earned $550.4 million, so this was a huge improvement.

Shall the momentum then carry on into June? Well, it’s a distinct possibility. It’s interesting, though, comparing 2024 to 2025. In 2024, as mentioned, we started the summer off very slow, then had a breakout June that hit $965.9 million before July went higher and crossed the $1 billion mark. I don’t want to predict that things will be flip-flopped here with May and June before July heads to the stratosphere with “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Superman,” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps.” But I’m currently seeing just one movie that looks like a guaranteed hit in June, with a handful of others that have a lot of questions marks surrounding them. Maybe all the question marks wind up surprising and becoming breakout hits and lead to another great month, but I’m not so sure, so let’s dive into specifics here so that you know what I’m talking about here.

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

June 6 – 8

Lionsgate’s "From the World of John Wick: Ballerina"

We start June off with one major release and a handful of smaller ones. With that one major one, it’s Lionsgate and they’re going to make it absolutely clear what universe this movie is from with the title From the World of John Wick: Ballerina. Director Chad Stahelski spent the majority of the last decade doing nothing but John Wick movies and came up with a four-movie saga that got increasingly more popular as it went on, to the degree of “John Wick: Chapter 4” opening to $73.8 million domestically and finishing with $187.3 million domestically and $447.3 million worldwide. If you watched the movie, you’ll note that clearly Stahelski meant for that to be the final movie in his saga, but Lionsgate, thinking with their bank account, was clearly not ready for the franchise to be over. So while they continue to try to get Stahelski and star Keanu Reeves to return for an official fifth movie, it’s off into the spin-off realm we go! Taking place at around the events of the third film, hence Reeves making a cameo appearance that’s probably a much bigger part of the advertising than it should be, this movie follows a character named Eve, played by Ana de Armas, who is a trained assassin seeking revenge after her father’s death. The movie is the first movie in the franchise not directed by Stahelski as it’s Len Wiseman, director of the Underworld movies and 2012’s “Total Recall” remake. That might have John Wick fans slightly nervous, but one hopes that Wiseman took enough notes from Stahelski to make this at least a satisfactory entry in the universe, which based on early reaction seems to be the case so far.

In regards to box office, the challenge here will be to see if “Ballerina” can dethrone “Lilo & Stitch,” which after opening to $146 million over the 3-day Memorial Day weekend, and $182.6 million over the 4-day weekend, officially fell 58 percent in weekend 2 to make $61.8 million. One might expect it to hold slightly better in weekend 3. As such, another 50 percent drop would put it in the $30 million range. If it holds slightly better, than somewhere between $30-40 million would be where “Lilo & Stitch” would be expected to hit. And that’s the exact range that Box Office Pro has for “Ballerina” in their current weekend forecast, so this could be a competitive weekend if that holds true. Spin-offs rarely hit the heights of the original series, so of course “Ballerina” isn’t expected to come anywhere near $73.8 million opening of “John Wick: Chapter 4” or even the $56.8 million opening of “John Wick: Chapter 3.” But if it does hit in the $30 million range, that would put it in the realm of “John Wick: Chapter 2,” which opened to $30.4 million.

As mentioned, “Ballerina” is the only major release of the weekend, but we do have a couple of medium sized releases coming through. The first one of that bunch is actually the nationwide expansion of Wes Anderson’s latest movie The Phoenician Scheme. This opened in 6 theaters on the final weekend of May, taking in $560,499, for an impressive per theater average of $93,417. Wes Anderson has always been a much bigger hit with the platform releases rather than being a huge mainstream draw. In fact, a lot of his movies have had a much slower roll-out with his niche appeal, but “The Phoenician Scheme” goes straight from 6 theaters to 1,678 theaters, which nearly identically matches the strategy of 2023’s “Asteroid City.” That movie opened to a slightly higher $853,382 in 6 theaters, then expanded to $1,675 theaters in its second weekend and made just over $9 million. With “The Phoenician Scheme” opening slightly smaller, maybe that sets it up to also make slightly less with $6-8 million or so, but we shall quickly see. Those who have seen the movie describe it very much as a Wes Anderson film and if you’ve seen any of his previous films, you’ll know what that means. His type of movies are basically their own genre and he doesn’t seem to have much of a desire to skew from that. They’re also always an acting party, with many actors perfectly content to show up in just a scene or two. Benecio del Toro is the top billed cast member for this movie, but below him on the poster is Mia Threapleton, Michael Cera, Riz Ahmed, Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Mathieu Amalric, Richard Ayoade, Jeffrey Wright, Scarlett Johansson, Benedict Cumberbatch, Rupert Friend, and Hope Davis. And that’s not all the cast. Just the ones who managed to get their name on the poster.

Clocking in just under “The Phoenician Scheme” in regards to theater count is the horror film Dangerous Animals, which opens in 1,636 theaters. This is a movie whose theatrical distribution is being handled by IFC Films before it eventually heads over the streaming service Shudder, which is a release strategy taken by a variety of horror films from last year and this year, including “Stopmotion,” “Late Night with the Devil,” “In a Violent Nature,” “Oddity,” “Azrael,” and “The Rule of Jenny Pen.” Of that group, the two movies that match the theater count that “Dangerous Animals” is getting are “Late Night with the Devil” and “In a Violent Nature,” which opened to $2.8 million and $2.1 million, respectively. The buzz for “Dangerous Animals” has felt slightly muted, but reviews have been solid so far at 84 percent on Rotten Tomatoes. The movie stars Jai Courtney as a shark-obsessed serial killer, while Hassie Harrison plays a girl named Zephyr who gets kidnapped and wakes up on his boat and has to figure out how to escape before she gets fed to the sharks.

The last movie I’ll mention here for this weekend is Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye. I say movie here, but this is a collection of episodes from the anime series “Dan Da Dan” (I’ve also seen it stylized as “Dandadan”), which began airing last year and has a second season coming soon that will be released by either Crunchyroll, Netflix, or Hulu, depending on where in the world you live. Last year the first three episodes of season 1 were released theatrically as “Dan Da Dan: First Encounter,” while “Dan Da Dan: Evil Eye” this weekend is the first three episodes of season 2. In North America, it’s Hulu that’s releasing the series, while GKIDS is handling the theatrical event. An official theater count hasn’t been reported as of me typing this, but “First Encounter” this past September was released in 610 theaters domestically and earned $925,506, so I’d naturally expect something similar here.

June 13 – 15

Universal’s "How to Train Your Dragon"

In the intro of this post, I mentioned that it feels like there is one movie this month that feels like a guaranteed hit. That comes this weekend with Universal’s live-action remake of How to Train Your Dragon. I’m not really sure an introduction to this needs to be made, but “How to Train Your Dragon” was a 2010 animated film by DreamWorks Animation loosely based on the 2003 novel that is the first in a series that is currently 12 books deep. So there’s no shortage of source material here. DreamWorks’ movies capped off as a trilogy, with the second and third movies being released in 2014 and 2019, respectively. There were also three different TV shows that started on Cartoon Network in 2012, then transitioned to Netflix, Peackock, and Hulu. So this is definitely a franchise that remains quite popular and has many directions of where to go if they continue to do live action movies. Is it too soon to do a live action remake of a movie that came out in 2010? I suppose the answer to that question is up for debate, but just last month audiences said yes in a big way to “Lilo & Stitch,” which was a 2002 release. Disney is going for the 2010s next year with a live-action remake of “Moana,” so it looks like both the 2000s and 2010s are both now on the docket when it comes to these live-action remakes. “How to Train Your Dragon” this month will be a critical step in studios confirming from audiences that this is the direction they want studios to go. Don’t want it? Answer is simple. Don’t go. But the trailer reaction so far has been very strong and Box Office Pro is projecting this to open in the realm of $80-100 million, so the indication here is that audiences are wanting these remakes, despite what you might gather from people online. And if this does indeed work, DreamWorks might get all sorts of ideas of what to do next, beginning with a sequel to this one, already scheduled for June 2027.

Like the first weekend of June, “How to Train Your Dragon” is the lone major wide release, but we also have a trilogy of movies opening below it. And with two of them, you might think that we’ve entered awards season when you look at the titles. On that note, we’ll start with the much buzzed about release of The Life of Chuck. This movie debuted last year at the Toronto International Film Festival and wound up winning the People’s Choice Award at the festival. Every year since 2012, the winner of this award has gone onto being nominated for best picture at the Oscars, with a few best picture winners being in that club. So it was a big deal that “The Life of Chuck” beat out “Anora,” which did win best picture, and “Emelia Pérez,” which was nominated for 13 Oscars, those two movies being the two runners up for the People’s Choice Award at TIFF. It also made it a bit of a surprise that NEON chose to NOT release the movie during awards season last year, but instead put it out in the summer of this year. But current buzz, based on continued strong reaction to the movie, suggests that this is likely to be a film that has strong longevity throughout the year and winds up on the awards season ballot for this upcoming Oscars. The movie is directed by Mike Flanagan and is based on a Stephen King novella. Based on those two names you might think that this was a horror film. But it is not. This is described as a life-affirming, genre-bending drama telling three chapters in the life of an ordinary man named Chuck Krantz, the adult version of whom is played by Tom Hiddleston, with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Karen Gillan, and Mark Hamill getting the main co-star credit on the movie’s poster.

The other movie that makes it feel like we’re heading into awards season is the movie Materialists, which is the latest movie from director Celine Song. Now I mention this in awards context, not necessarily because of any buzz the movie itself is getting, but because Celine Song’s first movie was the drama “Past Lives,” which did get nominated for both best picture and best original screenplay. “Materialists” is her second directorial feature, so there’s been a certain level of buzz about what she’s doing next. And that next movie here looks like its an homage to the early 2000s romantic comedy, as Dakota Johnston plays a matchmaker currently struggling with her own romantic life, torn between an old ex played by Chris Evans and a new lover she met played by Pedro Pascal. One might wonder, given the success of “Past Lives,” as to why this isn’t coming out later in the year. But “Past Lives” wound up being a summer release as well. And awards or not, perhaps Celine Song is perfectly happy to use her success with her previous movie to simply provide a good summer rom-com for audiences. While its not necessarily projected to be a huge hit, this nevertheless has the pieces on paper to be a sleeper hit, or at least be a movie that remains part of the general conversation longer than just its initial theatrical run.

With the final release of the weekend, to heck with awards or giant summer blockbusters, we’re going Samuel L. Jackson in a Western with the movie The Unholy Trinity. We’ve got buried secrets in an 1870s Montana town that leads a young man to return to claim his legacy, while the Sheriff is determined to maintain order and a mysterious stranger is bent on destroying it. Get out your guns, horses, and appetite for adventure with Pierce Brosnan as the Sheriff, Samuel L. Jackson as the chaotic mystery man, and the somewhat newcomer Brandon Lessard playing the young man caught in between the two. This comes from distributor Roadside Attractions, who are known for their smaller and medium sized releases, so this won’t be a huge release. But hey, if you hate the trend of remakes and don’t want to give DreamWorks your money, this is one of three original movies hitting your local theater that you can see instead. Can’t say Hollywood is out of ideas when you don’t put enough effort into seeking out their original ideas that they release.

June 20 – 22

Pixar's "Elio"

Last June it was Pixar that really blew up the box office with their massive hit, “Inside Out 2.” A year later at nearly the same spot in the calendar, they are back with their latest original flick Elio. This is a movie about an Earth kid named Elio Solis who has a dream of being abducted by aliens. One day his wish comes true and he’s beamed up to the “Communiverse,” and interplanetary organization with representatives from many galaxies and they mistakenly think Elio is Earth’s leader, which sends him on quite the space adventure where he has to figure out who he is and where he’s truly meant to be. Pixar has actually been advertising this one for two years now. The initial teaser came out in June 2023, ahead of its initial scheduled release date of March 2024, but that was pushed back to this month due to the SAG-AFTRA strike in 2023. Despite having the trailer out for a long time, though, this appears to be a Pixar movie that’s having trouble gaining traction, not helped by the fact that it has “How to Train Your Dragon” looming right before it the weekend before. In all the history of Pixar, there’s only been six of the 25 theatrically released movies (“Soul,” “Luca,” and “Turning Red” went straight to Disney+) that opened below $50 million. When you adjust for ticket price inflation, that number goes from six movies to two movies: “Onward” and “Elemental.” And even then, “Onward” was hurt severely by being released in the early stages of COVID and only got two weeks in theaters before theaters shut down. An opening in the $60-80 million range used to be common for a Pixar original as Pixar was a strong enough brand on its own to get people excited to see whatever they put out, but that seems to be a thing of the past for Pixar.

There’s probably a variety of reasons for that. The biggest being that we’re simply in a phase where audiences are less interested in seeing original films and are more likely to show up for the sequels and remakes. But also, the fact that Disney sent those three Pixar originals straight to Disney+ during COVID got people out of the habit of seeing Pixar in theaters. Disney has been trying to make up for that and get people to go back to theaters for all of their movies really, but for the case of Pixar, it hasn’t exactly worked. “Elemental” ended up holding well after its very disappointing $29.6 million opening. And of course “Inside Out 2” went through the stratosphere, but again that was a sequel to a very popular film as opposed to an old-fashioned Pixar original. Pixar could really use a win to maintain upward momentum, but tracking from Box Office Pro has it pegged in the $35-45 million range. And given the lack of buzz on this, that seems to be a range that makes sense. And if that range is correct, that might only be good enough for No. 2 on the weekend, behind the second weekend of “How to Train Your Dragon.” This might be a movie that will have to rely more on good reviews and word of mouth, much like “Elemental” did. But nevertheless, for those who are tired of sequels and remakes, here’s your opportunity to support an original animated film. If “Elio” can’t gain any traction, then you’ll know why moving forward there will be more movies like “Toy Story 5,” “Coco 2,” and “Incredibles 3” (three movies currently in production) rather than more originals like “Elio.”

Competing with “Elio” this weekend will be another horror franchise revival, with the movie 28 Years Later. This will be the third movie in this series, with “28 Days Later” coming out in 2003, followed by “28 Weeks Later” in 2007. It hasn’t quite been 28 years since the second movie in real life, but it has been 18 years, which is a significant gap between sequels. When it comes to horror franchise revivals, the most recent example comes from just last month with “Final Destination: Bloodlines” not only successfully bringing the franchise back, but also becoming the highest grossing entry in the franchise, even when you do adjust for ticket price inflation. And that had a similar gap as “Final Destination 5” was released in 2011. The question here is, has the “28 Days Later” franchise gained enough popularity over the years for horror audiences to be excited for this new release? Fans of the movies have reason to be excited as Danny Boyle, director of the first movie, has returned to write and direct this new one. The movie also returns Alex Garland as a writer. Not only did Garland write the original, but he’s gained plenty of popularity since by directing movies like “Ex Machina,” “Annihilation” and last year’s “Civil War.” So on paper this seems poised for success. And to be the highest opening in the franchise is actually a very low bar. The original only opened to $10.1 million, while the sequel opened a bit lower to $9.8 million. Adjust for ticket price inflation and those adjust to $18.9 million and $16.1 million. So a $16-18 million range seems like a reasonable hurdle to clear, providing adult counter-programming for the two big family films at the top of the box office.

Two family films at the top of the box office will be supplemented by two adult films opening below them. Those are the aforementioned horror film “28 Years Later” and the final movie of this weekend, Bride Hard. For those looking for alternate entertainment, but who don’t like horror, “Bride Hard” is an action comedy where Rebel Wilson plays a secret agent attended her best friend’s wedding. When the wedding gets overtaken by a mercenary group, Rebel Wilson reveals her secret identity to her friends and fights like mad to stop the mercenary group and save her friend’s wedding. In times of old, comedies like this had the potential to become huge summer hits. My initial thought went to movies like “Spy!” from 2015 or “Heat” from 2013, two Melissa McCarthy comedies that opened to $29.1 million and $39.1 million, respectively, both holding well to gross over $100 million domestically. In our current post-COVID age, though, comedy is a genre that does much better on streaming as opposed to theatrically. And thus as a best case scenario, you’ll instead get movies like Jennifer Lawrence’s “No Hard Feelings,” which opened to $15 million in the summer of 2023 and finished with $50.5 million. Or in a worse case scenario, you’ll get movies like “Joy Ride” from that same summer that opened to $5.8 million, despite great reviews. Or a slightly different style of action comedy, “Novocaine” from this year that opened to $8.8 million. “Bride Hard” does have name recognition with its stars and if it gets good reviews, that’ll obviously help. But it still seems like a movie that hits in the $8-12 million range.

June 27 – 29

Universal's "M3GAN 2.0"

The final weekend of June has quite the unique showdown before July comes around and sees the likes of “Jurassic World: Rebirth” and “Superman” dominate the market. I’m honestly not sure which of these two new movies from this weekend will come out on top, but my gut instinct says to mention M3GAN 2.0 first. The first movie became quite the sensation in January 2023, being a horror movie about an A.I. doll that was programmed to be a child’s best friend and protector, while helping out the parents quite a bit. And because A.I. in Hollywood movies never turns out well, M3GAN’s programming became quite faulty as she became a little too protective and resorting to quite the extreme violence in the process. What was initially thought of as a potential throwaway January horror film, not only got great reaction out of audiences and critics, but opened to $30.4 million and finished just shy of $100 million domestically with $95.2 million. Now Universal is confident enough with this in regards to franchise potential that they made the decision to release the sequel as a big summer horror film. M3GAN is now upgraded and better than ever, ready to cause more chaos? Horror sequels have always had a shaky reputation at the box office, but yet it’s perhaps the most commonly franchised genre because they often come with a much lower budget. Point in case, “M3GAN” made, as mentioned, $95.2 million domestically, as well as $181.8 million worldwide. The budget was just $12 million. So with that in mind, “M3GAN 2.0” doesn’t necessarily need to do super well to be a success, but given how popular the movie was, and how viral her dancing went on Tik Tok, a sequel has the potential to blow, especially considering the PG-13 rating leaves it very open for the teen market. This could easily improve upon the first movie’s $30.4 million opening.

If “M3GAN 2.0” underperforms, or does well, but not as well as the first, then the other movie that could very easily win out this weekend is F1: The Movie. Despite being released two weekends after Father’s Day, this does nevertheless give off vibes as the most “Dad Movie” of the summer. The premise is about a former Formula One driver who is forced into retirement after a major accident who is asked to come out of retirement to help mentor a new rookie driver. The movie has Brad Pitt in the lead role and is directed by Joseph Kosinski, director of “Top Gun: Maverick.” I suppose in an absolute dream scenario, Kosinski would love to have another hit on the level of “Top Gun: Maverick,” but the real easy and likely much more realistic comparison would be to fellow racing movie, “Ford v. Ferrari,” which opened to $31.5 million in November 2019. That movie went onto make $117.6 million domestically and $224.4 million worldwide, so it held really well. It also got a handful of Oscar nominations that year. Could a summer release with all the IMAX screens lead to a much higher opening in the $50-60 million range? Seems like a possibility. It does make it interesting though as both major releases this weekend, “M3GAN 2.0” and “F1,” both have easy comparisons that opened at almost the exact same level. Will they both hit that range? Will one be a breakout hit, while the other one disappoints? That will obviously be determined by audience reaction and overall reviews. And regardless of what happens, they each will have just five days in theaters before “Jurassic World: Rebirth” roars onto the screens on Wednesday, July 2.

While the aforementioned duel should be interesting to follow, there is a third movie getting released and that’s the A24 drama Sorry, Baby, which had its debut earlier this year at Sundance, getting very positive remarks as it currently has a 96 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes after 50 reviews. The movie is the feature-length directorial debut of Eva Victor, who wrote and directed this movie, but also stars in the movie as the lead role of a woman named Agnes who went through a traumatic event and has to figure out how to move forward. The movie has been described as being unfiltered and frank in both its tragedy and comedy, balancing the line of being darkly humorous as well as extremely poignant. A summer film with breakout potential for all audiences? Perhaps not. But smaller films out of festivals are scattered across the release calendar as options for those who desire something unique or original. Giant blockbuster films aren’t the only ones released during the summer months.

Movie Preview: May 2025

Summer doesn’t technically start until June 20 this year, the day of the summer solstice. But the beginning of summer can be a bit ambiguous, right? If you’re in school, summer in your mind probably begins when school ends. Others might be a bit simplistic and say summer begins June 1. However, in Hollywood we’ve decided that the summer movie season begins on the first weekend of May, and is traditionally kicked off by the release of the newest big Marvel movie. That wasn’t quite the case last year due to the strikes throwing Marvel off their groove in 2024, but they’re back on track now as “Thunderbolts*” has officially been released, meaning the summer movie season has begun!

The first quarter of the year got 2025 off to an absolutely miserable start in regards to box office performance, especially with March being one of the lowest grossing Marches ever, not counting the two COVID years. But as we’ve consistently seen in the post-COVID universe, people still ARE willing to come out to the movies. They just might be a tad bit more selective with what they choose to come out to support. April isn’t usually the month that lights a fire in the box office. Historically speaking, April is often the silence before the storm. But that was not the case this year as “A Minecraft Movie” blew the lids off the box office. That wasn’t the only success, though. “Sinners” has become a box office and cultural phenomenon as it had one of the highest openings ever for an original horror film, then had the third best hold ever for any movie that opened north of $40 million. In addition to that, “The King of Kings” was a solid Easter hit, “The Accountant 2” had a solid opening weekend in the final weekend of April, and “Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith” had a very successful one-week run as it celebrated its 20th anniversary. At $875.3 million total, that’s the fourth highest April on record, behind 2018 and 2019 when Marvel released “Avengers: Infinity War” and “Avengers: Endgame” respectively, as well as April 2023 when “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” became a mega hit.

Last year saw May 2024 get last summer off to a miserable start before things really caught fire in June and July. While this year also sees June and July feel quite loaded, May does seem a lot more promising as well. As mentioned, we have “Thunderbolts*” to talk about to start things off, as well as what looks like a very crowded Memorial Day weekend, with a few wild cards in between, so let’s dive in and see what exactly this first month of the summer has to offer!

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. The movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

May 2 – 4

Marvel's "Thunderbolts*"

As per tradition, A Marvel movie is kicking off the summer box office. This year that Marvel movie is Thunderbolts*, asterisk in the title very much required. This is a movie that some have stated is parallel to Marvel’s version of “Suicide Squad.” While not completely accurate, DC’s “Suicide Squad” is a team of villains brought together by Amanda Waller to fight a more dangerous villain. If they win, cool. Mission accomplished! If they fail, they were all villains, anyways, so no harm no foul. The parallel to Amanda Waller here would be Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, played by Julia Louis-Dreyfus. Although the biggest difference is that she’s initially trying to get them all killed so that she avoids impeachment, as she’s the CIA director who is facing some significant allegations. The group of them includes Yelena, John Walker, Ghost, and Taskmaster, with a mysterious character simply named Bob also showing up in the room. Once they realize what is actually going on, the group of them band together to escape and are then later joined by Bucky Barnes and Red Guardian to form this rag tag group of secondary Marvel characters who set out to help stop the latest crisis that poor New York is facing in this universe. The other big difference between “Thunderbolts*” and “Suicide Squad” is that these characters aren’t really villains, but are rather morally questionable protagonists who have all been going through a rough time in form or another. While none of them are Marvel A-Listers, by the end of the movie they hope to be a major part of the newest phase of the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

In regards to what this latest Marvel movie will do on the financial side of things, it’s worth noting that their biggest openings and box office hits have traditionally come with their sequels or Avengers films. While none of these characters are new entries to the MCU, per sé, typically the first entry in a new Marvel sub-franchise doesn’t perform as strongly as the others. And given that there’s no A-List characters to headline the movie, it’ll have a harder time attracting the more casual movie going audiences. The expectation going into the weekend has been an opening in the $75-85 million range domestically, so around the same realm, or perhaps a bit lower than “Captain America: Brave New World,” which opened to $88 million back in February. So far, though, the response to “Thunderbolts*” has been quite positive. As of me typing this, the movie currently has am 89 percent score from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, as well as a 95 percent audience score. Compare that to the 48 percent score that “Brave New World” got from critics and this does suggest that “Thunderbolts*” should have solid word of mouth that leads to better legs. “Brave New World” just barely scraped and crawled its way past $200 million domestically after suffering a steep 68 percent drop in Weekend 2. Even if “Thunderbolts*” doesn’t match the opening weekend of “Brave New World,” my thinking is that it’s set up to have a stronger hold, perhaps finishing in the $225-250 million range domestically, which would be similar to “Shang-Chi” in 2021, which opened to $75.4 million and finished with $224.5 million.

While “Thunderbolts*” is the only major wide release this weekend, there are two moderate releases hitting theaters. Nicolas Cage fans will be happy to see The Surfer, arriving in 884 theaters. Cage plays a dad who simply wants to take his son surfing on the beach when a group of locals humiliates him and causes a conflict that keeps rising in this latest psychological thriller. Based on the trailer, it seems like another movie where Cage is having a lot of fun with his role that looks to continue to build on the recent Nicolas Cage renaissance. With over 100 reviews counted, the movie stands as certified fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with an 86 percent score from critics. It’s not playing wide enough to truly break out, but it has the potential to have a longer life beyond theaters as more Nicolas Cage fans discover it.

On the opposite side of that, playing in 794 theaters is the horror movie Rosario. The movie only has 21 reviews counted as of me typing this, so it appears to be even less on the radar, but two-thirds of those are positive, so not a bad sign for an under-the-radar horror film. This is the feature-length directorial debut of Felipe Vargas, who prior to this has only worked on a bunch of shorts. This movie is named after its lead character Rosario Fuentes, played by Emeraude Toubia, who heads over to her grandmother’s apartment following her grandmother’s sudden death, only to find occult artifacts tied to dark generational rituals that lead to supernatural occurrences that take over her grandmother’s body. Again, it’s not going to make much of a box office impact, but it’s a title for horror fans to discover, either now or down the road. Felipe Vargas also has his next couple of projects lined up, so this appears to be a jumping off point for his career as well.

Finally Fathom Events will be re-releasing Monty Python and the Holy Grail back into theaters for its 50th anniversary. The catch here is that this is apparently a two-day event only on Sunday, May 4th and Wednesday, May 7th. It does appear to be a wide release on those two days, but in my local theater it is only listed for one showing on each of those days, so for those who want to catch this in theaters, options are very limited. But they are available.

May 9 – 11

RLJ Entertainment's "Clown in a Cornfield"

As mentioned previously, it is tradition to begin the summer movie season with a big Marvel movie. But it’s also tradition for other studios to avoid that Marvel movie’s second weekend with their major titles. So in regards to major summer blockbusters, those will return on Memorial Day weekend and we’ll certainly have plenty to talk about there. In regards to the second weekend of “Thunderbolts*,” which will play here without any direct competition, it’s my guess that it’ll have a pretty decent hold here, at least in comparison to “Captain America: Brave New World,” which opened to $88.8 million, but then fell 68 percent in its second weekend to make $28.2 million. Flipping over to “Shang-Chi” that I referenced prior, that movie opened to $75.4 million, but then only fell 54 percent to make $34.7 million in its second weekend. That seems like a plausible comparison here, given the positive reaction to the movie so far.

While it’s correct that “Thunderbolts*” has no major competition this weekend and no new blockbuster releases, there are four smaller new releases and it’s been a bit of a fun game to try to figure out which of those will win out as they all fight for spots in the top 5 or top 10, or if any of them will even hit $10 million this weekend. Box Office Pro has them all pegged in the $2-4 million range, so they might not even hit $5 million, so your guess might be as good as mine here. However, for the sake of a fun headline picture for this weekend, I’ll start with Clown in a Cornfield. And I’ll give you one guess as to what this movie is about. If you guess that it’s a slasher horror about a clown… in a cornfield, then ding ding! You’re correct! The careers of real clowns ended a long time ago, possibly when actual killer clowns started showing up, but if not then, Stephen King with Pennywise in his novel “IT,” later adapted into a TV miniseries and the two movies in the 2010s, certainly did clowns no favors. Recently, in addition to Pennywise coming back to theaters, we also have Art the Clown becoming a thing in the “Terrifier” movies. I’m not sure if this clown has a name, but “Clown in a Cornfield” is based on a 2020 novel of the same name, with the movie being directed by Eli Craig, director of “Tucker and Dale vs. Evil,” and has a very early critics score of 94 percent, indicating that this could be a fun crowd pleaser. This is also a Shudder movie, so if it doesn’t connect with audiences in theaters, it’ll be available shortly on that streaming service.

Next up, I’ll put my bets into a recognizable brand name with the movie Juliet & Romeo, which likely has flipped the names in the title to make it easier to find in search results, given that there’s already been a million adaptations of Shakespeare’s “Romeo & Juliet.” What sets this one aside from the rest. Well, from the costume designs and set design, it appears to have gone back to the old Shakespeare setting of the story rather than being a modern adaptation. However, that’s not the biggest thing that sets this apart. This is a musical. An original pop musical… for better or for worse. Old-fashioned setting. Modern pop music. That’s the perfect blend, right? At the very least, this is certain to connect with a specific demographic of humans and there’s nothing wrong with aiming for a specific niche like that. To me this seems like a thing that teenage girls would be the most interested in. Now the question is if there’s awareness that this actually exists. And if so, can Briarcliffe get them to actually come out and see it. To date, the biggest release for Briarcliffe is the 2022 Liam Neeson action movie “Blacklight,” which opened to $3.5 million, so the bar is not particularly high for this to be their biggest opener. Their most recent wide release was “Magazine Dreams,” which opened to $701,365 from 815 theaters in March. Prior to that, “My Dead Friend Zoe” opened to $740,088 from 780 theaters in February.

Of the four new releases, the movie that comes from the biggest studio, and also has the most trailer views, and that is Lionsgate’s Shadow Force. This is an action film starring Kerry Washington and Omar Sy, who play a couple on the run from a group called Shadow Force. According to the trailer, the No. 1 rule of Shadow Force is that you don’t leave Shadow Force. And, well, our lead couple did. They fell in love and left the group. And now they’re getting hunted by the group. In comparison to the other two movies already mentioned, “Shadow Force” is disadvantaged by not having a catchy premise like a killer clown or being based on a highly recognizable property, but Lionsgate does have more resources to get the word out on this. And thus if adult males especially have an itch for an action film, this could satisfy that. Although this has been released already in a few countries and the initial reactions don’t seem particularly great. So if reviews end up being bad, that could cause any on the fence to decide against it and save their money for something else coming later.

It could come back to haunt me, but my current bet for last of these four is the action comedy Fight or Flight. While the trailer might make this seem like the best of the bunch, I mostly base this off the fact that this comes from Vertical Entertainment, whose highest opening is the horror film “The Exorcism,” which opened to $2.5 million last summer in 2,240 theaters. Vertical Entertainment also opened “In the Lost Lands” this March, which opened to just $1.1 million from 1,370 theaters, despite being a Paul W.S. Anderson flick with a $55 million budget. Early theater counts estimate that “Fight or Flight” will open closer to that rather than the 2,000+ theaters of “The Exorcism.” The advantage this movie has it that it has already come out in many countries, the earliest being Germany in December 2024 and the reaction has been that it is a lot of fun. Many have compared it to “Bullet Train,” but on a plane. The movie stars Josh Hartnett on a bit of a career revival following “Oppenheimer” and “Trap.” This movie has him playing a mercenary who is hired to track someone down on a plane and protect her, only to find out that everyone else on the plane is trying to kill both of them. If this does connect with audiences, I could see this possibly opening up at least above the previous two, but if awareness for all four of these movies isn’t particularly high, that might not be the biggest bar.

May 16 – 18

Warner Bros.' "Final Destination: Bloodlines"

After a weekend of a bunch of smaller releases, the biggest blockbusters of the month are still a week away, but this third weekend does still have one major franchise film and that is Final Destination: Bloodlines, which is the sixth movie in the Final Destination franchise, which began in 2000 with “Final Destination.” The general idea here with this franchise involves a person receiving a premonition about a major disaster that’s about to occur and warning their group of friends to avoid that in order to survive, only for the survivors to all die one by one in a series of bizarre, unrelated accidents after the fact, showing that they’re all doomed to die one way or another. The franchise has been praised for its unique take on death as well as it’s creative, over-the-top death sequences. As far as how well this sixth movie will do, it’s worth pointing out that Box Office Pro has it projected to open to $40-50 million. And while Box Office Pro has been all over the map with their long range forecasts as of late, it’s worth noting that they were right on with “Sinners,” so if they’re accurate here, this could be another huge horror opening to boost the summer. However, when I look at the past trends for this franchise, after the first movie opened to $10 million, the second, third, and fifth movie all opened consistently between $16-19 million. The highest opening was the fourth movie, titled simply as “The Final Destination,” which opened to $27.4 million. Now given that it’s been 14 years since the most recent one, it’s worth looking at those openings when adjusted for ticket price inflation. In which case, according to the-numbers.com, the second, third, and fifth movies adjust to a range of $25-33 million, with the fourth one adjusting to $41.3 million. Is there enough interest in a franchise revival for “Bloodlines” to be the biggest opening yet, as Box Office Pro projects? Or is that $25-33 million range a more realistic take?

The other notable release of this weekend is a bit of a unique project with the psychological thriller Hurry Up Tomorrow. If that title sounds vaguely familiar to you, it’s because it’s also the title of The Weeknd’s sixth studio album, which was released back in January. This movie was made as a companion piece to the album and stars The Weeknd himself, credited as Abel Tesfaye, his actual given name, along with Jenna Ortega and Barry Keoghan. The movie is directed by Trey Edward Shults, director of “Waves” and “It Comes at Night,” and was written by Shults, The Weeknd, and Reza Fahim, co-creator of the TV miniseries “The Idol” that The Weekend starred in. The movie itself is described as The Weekend playing a fictionalized version of himself, an insomniac musician on the verge of a mental breakdown who is pulled into an existential odyssey by a mysterious stranger. If you’ve listened to his music, you’ll probably note that his albums often have a lot more to say than your average album these days and his music videos have often felt cinematic, so this feels like a natural progression, but yet it’s still unique enough to not have much of a precedent in regards to how well this movie will do or if it’ll be able to attract more than just fans of The Weeknd’s music. Or how many fans of the recent album will show up to watch the movie. Current projections aren’t particularly high, but again there’s not much to compare to.

There are two other small films that are listed by the-numbers.com as a having a wide release. But my explorations make me think they’re more on the limited front, or just a few hundred theaters. First is the Korean drama Next Sohee, which was actually released at the Cannes Film Festival back in 2022 and had an international release spread across 2023. So the timing of this U.S. release is a bit interesting. The movie is about a high school student working at a call center who decides to end her life after five months of working there, as well as an investigation from a detective after the fact who sets out to learn what led to that.

The other small release is the horror film The Ruse, which is about an in-home caregiver who starts to fear for her life after being assigned to a mysterious elderly patient’s home in a remote seaside location. This comes from Stevan Mena, who directed the 2003 horror film “Malevolence” as well as the 2010 horror film “Bereavement.” Currently this movie has a very small imprint, produced by Mena Films and distributed by Seismic Releasing, neither of which have much experience in wide distribution. The trailer has less than 200,000 views and I can’t even find a Wikipedia article for the movie. But it’s IMDb page reveals that it was released at the Maine International Film Festival last year and those who saw it there seemed to have enjoyed it, so perhaps it’s a small movie worth seeking out at some point if you’re a horror fan.

May 23 – 26

Disney's "Lilo & Stitch" and Paramount's "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning"

And here we are. The four-day Memorial Day weekend, which is a weekend that has potential to have absolutely huge turnout with a cinematic battle of Mission: Impossible vs. Disney. Acknowledging that Disney very well could be the easy winner here, I’m nevertheless going to start with Mission: Impossible, with their eighth entry, Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning. Is this actually going to be the final movie in this franchise? Well, as a friend of mine always says, never believe Hollywood when they say something is the final chapter, especially not here when Tom Cruise has recently said that he wants to continue making this movies until he’s in his 80s. Paramount might want Tom Cruise to hush up, at least for now, because they’re definitely pushing this movie as the final one, not only re-titling the movie as “The Final Reckoning,” but also using the line in the trailer, “I need you trust me… one last time” in just about every marketing push. Perhaps the goal here is to make this feel more like an event film that you have to see in theaters, making up for their potential flubs with the recent movie, initially titled “Dead Reckoning Part 1,” which made it feel like the first half of a movie that can be skipped until Part 2 comes out. It also didn’t help that the timing of the release was the weekend before “Barbenheimer.” It opened to a 3-Day total of $54.7 million, finishing with $172.6 million domestically.

Can “The Final Reckoning” reverse course and score the franchise’s biggest opening? True or not, the urgency of being advertised as the final chapter often causes people to show up. Plus the Memorial Day weekend release, combined with less competition than “Dead Reckoning” had does give this potential. The current highest opening weekend of the franchise is “Fallout” in 2018 with $61.2 million. Given the franchise started in 1996, if you again press the inflation-adjusted button on the-numbers.com, the actual winner is “Mission: Impossible 2” with $121.4 million. “The Final Reckoning” is definitely not getting that high, but on this particular scale, the third, fifth, and sixth movies have a consistent range of $74-82 million. The fourth movie, “Ghost Protocol,” opened in December, so it’s not the best comparison. Box Office Pro is currently giving the movie a range of $65-80 million for the 3-Day and $75-100 million for the 4-Day. A range that wide feels like they’re cheating a bit, but if it hits the upper half of their 3-Day range, that would lineup with these previous entries in regards to attendance. If the movie can manage to hit $100 million on the 4-Day weekend, Paramount would definitely be celebrating quite a bit.

But even if it does open on the higher end of projections, would that be enough to top Disney’s Lilo & Stitch, the latest in their string of seemingly non-stop live-action remakes? Early indications say no. YouTuber Dan Murrell, whose specific niche is breaking down box office numbers, has predicted “Lilo & Stitch” as his top grossing movie of the summer. Aligning with that, Box Office Pro just released their long range forecast on the movie, pegging it at a $120-140 million 3-Day opening and a $135-165 million 4-Day opening. I just about fell on the floor when I saw that prediction. That would certainly be a huge win for Disney after suffering a massive loss with their extremely troubled remake of “Snow White” back in March, which couldn’t even get to $100 million domestically following a massively inflated budget of nearly $300 million, and that’s not even counting advertising and marketing. Some might say the reaction to that failure would be for them to stop with the remakes, claiming that people no longer care or want them. However, Disney’s approach might instead be to focus more on the correct remakes that audiences actually do want. Rather than going back to the 1930’s and 40s, 2002 might be a big winner. Remakes of the Renaissance movies were very successful, financially speaking. And although they’ve gone through almost all of those, except for maybe “Hercules” and “Hunchback,” which have been rumored to be in production for a while now, the 2000s movies seem like the next best thing to mine. And although Disney had a lot of failures in the early 2000s, “Lilo & Stitch” in 2002 was one of their bigger success stories. And with the live-action “Moana” scheduled for next year, if that’s also a huge success, the 2010s might be a target, too. I can almost guarantee “Frozen” heading into production if “Moana” works out.

I did mention the official prediction from Box Office Pro. If I were doing my own personal analysis of this, I’d take a look at “Aladdin” and “The Little Mermaid,” two live-action Disney remakes recently that also opened over Memorial Day weekend. “Aladdin” in 2019 opened to $91.5 million, while “The Little Mermaid” in 2023 opened to $95.6 million, both of those being 3-Day openings. The 4-Day openings were $116.8 million and $118.8 million, respectively. That would seem like the upper echelon to me, as there’s plenty of other examples of these Disney remakes opening in the $50-75 million range. But maybe we are in for a huge surprise. It’s at least definitely not going to be No. 1. That would go to “The Lion King” in 2019 opening to $191.7 million, followed by “Beauty and the Beast” in 2017 with $174.8 million. Current third place is “Alice in Wonderland” at $116.1 million, then “The Jungle Book” at $103.3 million.

While these two movies are the huge heavy hitters that could potentially push the weekend itself above $200 million, they aren’t the only two new releases. Hanging out far below those two will be the latest from Angel Studios, The Last Rodeo. This stars Neal McDonough as a retired rodeo star who enters a high-stakes bull-riding competition in order to save his grandson. Angel Studios did have a huge hit last month in “The King of Kings,” which opened to $19.4 million, and as of me typing this, has so far earned $56.4 million domestically, good enough for second place all-time for Angel Studios, behind “The Sound of Freedom.” But prior to that, Angel Studios was on a role with consistently opening movies in the $3-5 million range. Their third highest grossing movie is “Homestead” from December 2024, which also starred Neal McDonough, and opened to just above $6 million, finishing with $20.8 million total.

And finally, A24 will be expanding their movie Friendship this weekend into wide release. This movie is actually scheduled for limited release on May 9 and will play the game of rolling out slowly instead of jumping straight into wide release. Whether this is an expansion into 1,000+ theaters, or simply 500-800 theaters, I do not know. That’ll probably depend on how well the movie is received and performs in wide release. It has been a bit of a buzzy film, opening last year at the Toronto International Film Festival, and is a comedy starring Tim Robinson and Paul Rudd as two neighbors that develop a friendship that threatens to ruin both of their lives. Currently the movie sits at 91 percent from 45 reviews counted, so early critics who have seen it have liked it quite a bit, but we’ll see how that translates into success with general audiences.

May 30 – June 1

Sony's "Karate Kid: Legends"

The final weekend of May sees Hollywood mainly choosing to recover from the Memorial Day weekend as “Mission: Impossible” and “Lilo & Stitch” are both set to continue to do quite well. But we do get one additional wild card thrown into the mix with Karate Kid: Legends debuting. This will be the sixth Karate Kid movie that will be released to theaters, following the initial four in the 80s and 90s, as well as the 2010 remake with Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith. And now “Karate Kid: Legends” combines those two worlds as Jackie Chan and Ralph Macchio team up to train a new Karate Kid. Helping the franchise remain relevant since 2010 has been the Netlfix series “Cobra Kai,” which just finished its sixth and final season this February. “Cobra Kai” managed to bring back most of the characters from the first three Karate Kid movies, as well as introducing plenty of new ones. How many of the “Cobra Kai” characters outside Macchio will show up in this new movie is yet to be revealed, as this is not done by the same people. But again, it’s helped the franchise stay relevant. And if fans of the old movies, the 2010 remake, and “Cobra Kai” all show up, this has potential to be a decent hit. For comparison, the 2010 movie opened to $55.7 million in June 2010, and finished with $176.6 million domestically. If you adjust for inflation, that opening jumps up to $79.8 million. If “Karate Kid: Legends” does manage to hit in the $50-70 million range, that could be an entry for surprise movie of the summer. Box Office Pro has not yet released their long range forecast for this, so there’s nothing to compare to in that, but I’ll definitely be curious to see what they think. It’s also possible that audiences take this weekend off after a busy holiday, which could hurt this.

We will be finishing this post with the final horror film of the month, the supernatural horror film Bring Her Back, which follows a brother and sister uncovering a terrifying ritual at the secluded home of their new foster mother, played by Sally Hawkins. This movie comes from the directing duo of Danny and Michael Philippou, who previously directed the 2023 movie “Talk to Me.” Prior to that, the brothers ran the YouTube channel RackaRacka, so these guys are an example of YouTubers turned filmmakers who are now hoping that their second movie is as successful as the first one. “Talk to Me” opened to $10.4 million and held pretty well for a horror film, finishing with $48.3 million domestically and $91.9 million worldwide, which is not bad at all for a movie with a budget of $4.5 million. I’m not sure what the budget is on this new one, but I’m sure A24 is happy to have them back. If there’s enough good will from “Talk to Me,” I could see that translating into a successful run for “Bring Her Back.”