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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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.”