Movie Preview: September 2025

The summer movie season has concluded and schools are back in session. If I were to briefly summarize the whole summer, I’d say it was mostly successful. I think we have to accept the fact that we are solidly in a “new normal” and will likely never fully get back to the levels we were at pre-COVID. But in context of this new normal, the summer has to be considered a success as it had several massive hits with the likes of “Lilo & Stitch,” “Superman,” and “Jurassic World: Rebirth” proving that audiences still will go out to the theaters if it’s the right title. Overall, the summer earned $3.596 billion at the domestic box office, which was a shade below 2024, which earned $3.632 billion, both of which were below the “Barbenheimer” summer of 2023 that reached $4.039 billion. For historical context, the highest grossing summer was 2013 with $4.754 billion. So again, we’re a far cry from those levels, but overall not terrible.

In terms of August specifically, this was, as expected, the quietest month. There wasn’t a whole lot left on the calendar capable of breaking out. When Hollywood doesn’t schedule a ton of major releases, there’s only so much that the box office can do. The biggest story of the month was the horror movie “Weapons,” which broke out in a big way, earning $132.7 million in August, winning the box office title three out of five weekends during August. It could’ve done four weekends, but Netflix snuck “KPop Demon Hunters” in theaters for two days and took one of those titles. Outside that, “Freakier Friday,” “The Bad Guys 2,” and “The Naked Gun” performed serviceably compared to their budget, while not a lot of somebodies saw “Nobody 2” and even less were caught seeing Darren Aronofsky’s latest, “Caught Stealing.”

Like I mentioned last month, August through October is typically one of the quietest times of the year for the box office, but we already have a major story to talk about for September and a few other potential breakout hits in waiting, so let’s get right into it!

As always, release date information for this post is courtesy of the-numbers.com and boxofficepro.com. Interestingly enough, I took a slight jab at the latter last month for not being particularly helpful anymore. Not that they read that post, but they did catch up on their long-range forecast, getting it to a month in advance again. So they’re back to being helpful, at least for this month. Anyways… the movies listed are the ones currently scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.

September 5 – 7

Warner Bros.' "The Conjuring: Last Rites"

Labor Day weekend was included in my August movie preview, so we only have one quick weekend to recap here, but it was led by Warner Bros. having a rather stunning opening weekend with The Conjuring: Last Rites, which set a new franchise record with $84 million this past weekend. For context, the previous high for the franchise was held by “The Nun” in 2018 with $53.8 million. In regards to the main series of Conjuring movies, the original opened to $41.8 million in 2013, while “The Conjuring 2” opened to $40.4 million. The third movie, “The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It,” opened to just $24.1 million. Granted, that was one of the first major releases in the COVID recovery era of 2021, and was also a hybrid release on HBO Max, which Warner Bros. did with all their movies that year, but still. $20-30 million has been the typical range for this franchise. We’re nine movies in, 10 if you count “The Curse of La Llorona,” and “The Nun,” “The Conjuring” and “The Conjuring 2” are the only three movies that even opened above $40 million. Even going into the weekend, Box Office Pro’s headline was “THE CONJURING Angling For $40M Debut.” Their range was $40-50 million. I’m not sure even the most generous of prognosticators predicted that it was double the opening of the first two movies. Had I gotten around to this post myself last week, I might’ve predicted closer to $30 million because it didn’t seem like there was a ton of awareness or demand for a fourth Conjuring film. I would’ve definitely been very wrong.

So what led to this massive opening that was far above what anyone expected? Well, in hindsight it’s a simple answer. It was advertised as the final movie in the Conjuring franchise, at least in the main series. James Wan, who directed the first two movies and was on board as writer and producer of this movie, called this the end of an era, while Patrick Wilson and Vera Farmiga said that this would be their final time playing Ed and Lorraine Warren, who the main series of films have focused on. The trailer also invites audiences to come and figure out why this is the case that ended it all, as the movie is loosely based on the Smurl haunting, where Jack and Janet Smurl alleged that a demon inhabited their home between 1974 and 1989. The Warrens were called to investigate in 1986 and thus in this Conjuring movie universe, that’s the year where our story takes place. Will this actually be the final movie in the Conjuring series? Well, never believe Hollywood when they say something is the final chapter. Especially when it’s a horror franchise and that “final chapter” opens to $84 million domestically and $187 million worldwide off of a $55 million budget. At the very least, there will be prequels or spin-offs. There’s no way Warner Bros. is going to shut the door on this franchise after that opening. But whether or not that ends up being true, that marketing tactic definitely worked in getting fans of the franchise out for “one final ride.” Reviews weren’t particularly strong, so this is likely to be very frontloaded, but this does continue Warner Bros.’ hot streak in 2025 as they’ve now opened seven movies in a row to at least $40 million. Will their streak continue with eight? Well, likely not. That next movie is “One Battle After Another” from Paul Thomas Anderson later this month, but we’ll get to that soon.

This weekend actually provided a few different options. And we’ll briefly get to all of them, but in regards to the other new wide release, the competition for The Conjuring was on the exact opposite side of the spectrum when it comes to genre and tone and that is the animated film Light of the World. So you can go hunt demons with the Warrens or you can learn about Jesus. Now fans of the Conjuring series might point out that the whole point of the movies is to prove that God exists and will overcome the devil if you turn to him for help, so the movies have a baseline in Christianity, albeit in a more unconventional way. But that doesn’t mean you can show them in Sunday School. “Light of the World” you might be able to, though. Premise is simple. It’s an animated movie about the life of Jesus, this one told from the perspective of the apostle John. The movie was produced and distributed by Salvation Poem Project. It was released in 2,075 theaters and came in ninth place with $2.4 million. Coincidentally, this was not the first animated movie about Jesus to come out this year as “The King of Kings” was released back in April by Angel Studios and opened to $19.4 million, earning $60.3 million total domestically. In live action or animation, there was even a third movie about the life of Jesus, as “The Last Supper” opened in March. And if you count TV coming to theaters, the fifth season of “The Chosen” also premiered this year as a fourth theatrical event about Jesus. So lots of opportunities to learn about Jesus in theaters this year.

While “The Conjuring: Last Rites” and “Light of the World” were the only two wide releases to hit theaters this weekend, there were a couple of other options. Disney released Hamilton in 1,825 theaters and that actually came in second place with $10.1 million. This is, of course, the recording of the Broadway play that Disney was going to put in theaters a few years ago, but it wound up on Disney+ instead due to COVID. Five years later, audiences finally have the option of seeing it in theaters. As another option, Universal re-released The Breakfast Club in 1,130 theaters in honor of its 40th anniversary. Over Labor Day weekend, Universal did the same for “Jaws” for its 50th anniversary. That anniversary re-release earned nearly $10 million, earning second place that weekend. However, there was a lot less interest in “The Breakfast Club” as it made just $334,235.

September 12 – 14

Ufotable's "Demon Slayer: Infinity Train"

After its massive opening weekend, what is the likely expectation for “The Conjuring: Last Rites” in its second weekend? Taking a quick look at the second weekend drops of the franchise, most of the movies dropped between 53-57 percent. Only the original dropped less than that with 46 percent. That would put “Last Rites” in the $36-39 million range if it fell in line there. However, when you look at the daily charts of all the movies and specifically pay attention to the percent drops from day to day, the movie that “Last Rites” has aligned closest with is “The Nun,” which after earning the highest opening weekend in the franchise, also earned the biggest drop at 66 percent in its second weekend. Given the 57 percent score from critics for “Last Rites” and its B on CinemaScore (lower than the A- that the first two Conjuring movies got, as well as the B+ of the third), this does seem to be trending towards that heftier second weekend fall. If it does match up with “The Nun,” percentage-wise, that would mean a $28.5 million second weekend.

With that as the expected bar to dethrone “Last Rites,” is there any new releases this weekend that have the potential to hit that? Based on current buzz, the most likely title is Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle. “Demon Slayer” is a Japanese anime TV series based on the manga of the same name. The original run for the manga was from 2016 – 2020, while the TV series began its first season in 2019. As of now it’s had four seasons, with 63 episodes total. If I were doing my own independent research, I would note that “Infinity Castle” is the fourth theatrical event that the franchise has had. In looking at the opening weekends domestically for the previous three, “Mugen Train” opened to $21.1 million in 2021, while “To the Swordsmith Village” opened to $10.1 million and “To the Hashira Training” opened to $11.5 million in 2024. That would suggest somewhere in the range of $10-20 million for “Infinity Castle.” However, in diving a bit deeper, “To the Swordsmith Village” and “To the Hashira Training” were both compilation films. Episodes of the show released in theaters. “Mugen Train” was a standalone film that took place after the first season and worldwide earned $506.5 million. “Infinity Castle” is also a standalone film, the first in a planned trilogy of films that adapts the Infinity Castle arc in the manga, taking place after the fourth season. New content vs. compilation film is the reason why this is also expected to earn more. Worldwide, it’s already earned nearly $300 million after debuting in Japan back in July. Many projections, including Box Office Pro, have this projected to earn as much as $50 million this weekend. That would be quite the insane total. But the popularity of Demon Slayer is building. Could this be the second franchise film this month that soars above expectations?

The competition for “Infinity Castle” is another fellow TV series follow-up and that is Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale. The original run for the TV series went from 2010 – 2015. It had six seasons, with a total of 52 episodes. This current movie is the third follow-up movie to the series, with the first simply being called “Downton Abbey,” released in September 2019. That opened to $31 million domestically and made $96 million total. Three years later, and with a pandemic in between, “Downton Abbey: A New Era” opened in May 2022 and cut the original totals in half, opening to $16 million and finishing with $44.1 million. As the subtitle to this film suggests, this promises to be the grand finale of the whole series. Whether or not that winds up being true, we saw with the Conjuring what happens when you promise in both the title and the marketing that this is it. Fans often come out and see it one more time. With Downton Abbey here, I am a bit more convinced that this might actually be the grand finale and I could thus at least see this coming close to the first movie’s $31 million. Had I not had the advantage of hearing buzz about “Demon Slayer,” I might suggest that “Downton Abbey” and “Demon Slayer” would be in a tight race, both fighting to get to that $30 million to top “The Conjuring.” But it seems more likely at this point that it’s “Downton Abbey” and “The Conjuring” fighting for second place, rather than a three-way duel.

While the two TV show follow-ups and “The Conjuring” battle it out in the top three, there is actually two additional wide releases this weekend, for a total of four new options for anyone wanting to head out to the theaters. Building buzz in the indie horror realm is the movie The Long Walk. This movie is based off of a Stephen King novel and the task is simple. Walk. The setting is a dystopian future and each year a group of young men enter this annual contest where they must maintain a walking speed of at least three miles per hour or get shot. The contest keeps going until there is only one walker alive. And if this seems like a horror spin on “The Hunger Games,” a dystopian future with a group of younger people forced to compete in an annual contest until only one remains alive, the amusing connection there is that this is directed by Francis Lawrence, who directed all but the first Hunger Games movie. This is far from a unique concept, though, with the 2000 movie “Battle Royale” and the recent Netflix series “Squid Game” also doing variations of this concept. The original Stephen King novel was released in 1979, so perhaps the other things are inspired by this story rather than the other way around. Cooper Hoffman, David Jonsson, Charlie Plummer, Ben Wang, Josh Hamilton, and Roman Griffin Davis are among the walkers, while Mark Hamill is The Major who is running the competition. The projected opening is in the $10-15 million range.

Likely coming out on the bottom of the new releases, but certainly not to be forgotten about, is Spinal Tap II: The End Continues. This is the sequel to the 1984 film, “This is Spinal Tap,” which was a mockumentary about a fictional band called Spinal Tap, which first appeared on the 1979 sketch comedy pilot “The T.V. Show.” Ever since the movie, the actors have portrayed the band members at concerts and released music under the Spinal Tap name. “This is Spinal Tap” was the feature-length directorial debut for Rob Reiner, who directed the likes of “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride,” and “When Harry Met Sally…” right after, so he had quite the run. Rob Reiner is back directing this sequel mockumentary, which has the band reuniting after 15 years for one final concert. The original movie earned $5.8 million total domestically, which would adjust to about $15.9 million in today’s ticket prices, so I guess that would put it into cult classic range as it’s often seen as one of the best movies that was released in 1984. This sequel, however, doesn’t seem like it’s high on the radar as $4-6 million is the projected opening. It might have to rely on similar word of mouth as the original to make a name for itself.

And if all that is not appealing, the final option is the anniversary re-release of Toy Story, which will be celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, believe it or not. That’s 30 years of Pixar that’s now in the history books as the studio that changed animation is still very much going strong. And for better or for worse, so is the individual Toy Story franchise as “Toy Story 5” is currently set to be released next June. How well these re-releases are going to do is hard to predict. As mentioned early, “Jaws” earned nearly $10 million in its opening weekend, while “The Breakfast Club” followed a week later by not even cracking $500,000. One would think “Toy Story” would be a decent draw, especially with there not really being many big family films in the market at the moment, but people might choose to honor the anniversary by watching it at home on Disney+ instead.

September 19 – 21

Universal's "HIM"

September arriving means football season has also arrived. And while that brings much joy to sports fans around the country, it appears to also be football season in the horror realm this weekend with the new horror film HIM. I’m not sure how many sports related horror films have existed in cinema history, but this movie looks like a unique combination of sports drama and “The Substance” as a young football star goes to great lengths to be the best, which includes training at the isolated compound of a dynasty team’s aging quarterback, who puts him through quite the blood-chilling journey. Marlon Wayons plays the aging quarterback while the up-and-coming star is played by Tyriq Withers. The movie is directed by Justin Tipping and got purchased by Jordan Peele’s production company, Monkeypaw Productions, meaning the advertising campaign gets to slap Jordan Peele’s name all over the marketing on this one. The prognosis of what will end up at No. 1 this weekend is a bit murky. “Demon Slayer” getting a second weekend on top seems like the most likely scenario, but anime tends to be pretty frontloaded, so that’s not necessarily a guarantee. “Demon Slayer: Mugen Train” dropped 70 percent in weekend two for comparison. So if “HIM” manages to breakout and crack $20 million in its opening, it could be an interesting race this weekend. The current projection is $15-20 million, so that’s certainly within the range of possibilities.

Competing with the movie “HIM” this weekend will be A Big Bold Beautiful Journey, a movie that’s described as a romantic fantasy that stars Margot Robbie and Colin Farrell as two strangers that go on a magical adventure together. The trailer shows a door in the middle of the woods that they find and when they enter, it sends them back to a memory from their past. It appears that there’s many doors that they go through to learn various lessons and establish a connection. The movie reportedly was featured on the annual Black List in 2020 of popular screenplays that had not yet been produced. In 2024, it was announced that Korean filmmaker Kogonada, director of the 2022 indie hit “After Yang,” would direct the movie, with Sony Pictures distributing. So we have a football horror film competing with a romantic fantasy, which is a fun, unique face-off. Box Office Pro has this projected in the $10-15 million range, so a potential overlapping range for the two medium-budgeted films.

The final wide release of the weekend is the latest from Angel Studios, Rod Lurie’s The Senior. This is another football movie, which means we have two football movies to choose from this weekend. Although “The Senior” is probably more along the lines of your “traditional” sports drama rather than a sports horror film. That said, the story here is fairly unique. It tells the true story of Mike Flynt, who got kicked off his college football team, then returns 35 years later for his senior season of eligibility at the age of 59. Filming wrapped on the film back in 2022, so it’s had a bit of a journey in getting to theaters. It premiered at the Fort Lauderdale International Film Festival in November 2023 and was initially scheduled to be released in March of this year by Freestyle Releasing, then got removed from the calendar and picked up by Angel Studios and finally gets is release this weekend. Angel Studios has been pretty consistent with their releases. They’ve had two big hits with “Sound of Freedom” and “The King of Kings. But putting those aside as outliers, their other 12 releases from 2023 to now have averaged an opening weekend of $4.7 million and a domestic final total of $11.5 million. Their movie “Sketch” from last month, despite coming in with great reviews, had an opening weekend of just $2.4 million.

September 26 – 28

Warner Bros.' "One Battle After Another"

The final weekend of September will be headlined by the latest film from prestigious director Paul Thomas Anderson, One Battle After Another. This is the 10th feature-length film from Anderson. He’s done plenty of music videos and a handful of shorts in between, which is why I specific “feature-length films” in giving that official count, but whenever he has a new movie, a certain crowd of people definitely pay attention. Yet despite having a filmography as a director that includes “Boogie Nights,” “Magnolia,” “Punch-Drunk Love,” “There Will Be Blood” and “The Master,” Anderson has yet to win an Oscar, despite being nominated 11 times. Will this be the year he finally breaks through? Or at least has the Academy feel bad that they haven’t given him a win that they feel obligated to reward? We’ll see how that plays out as Awards season gets underway, but on paper this certainly seems like it has what it takes. It’s led by Leonardo DiCaprio, Benicio Del Toro, and Sean Penn, and has a whole lot of others joining the party as well in supporting roles. The trailer makes it seem like it’s quite the crazy adventure, but the basic premise follows a group of ex-revolutionaries reuniting to rescue one of their own’s daughter after an enemy of theirs resurfaces. As far as what this has the potential to do at the box office, I went to Anderson’s prior films to see if I can find a comparison and learned that this is his first movie to begin in wide release, so we’re in new territory here. Box Office Pro has this pegged at $15-20 million and Warner Bros. has been pushing this hard, but a potential cautionary tale is Darren Aronofsky’s “Caught Steeling” in August also had similar projections, but wound up with just $7.8 million. Speaking of Warner Bros., they have a current streak on the line of seven straight movies to debut with at least $40 million. This seems highly unlikely to continue that, but they did give this a production budget of $140 million, which is by far the biggest budget Anderson has had to work with. So given that, I’m sure Warner Bros. would really like this to be a huge surprise, otherwise it’s poised to be a money-loser for them.

From prestigious Oscar affair to a family adventure for young girls, the competition for Paul Thomas Anderson comes in the form of Gabby’s Dollhouse: The Movie, which is a live-action/animation hybrid film from DreamWorks animation based on the Netflix series “Gabby’s Dollhouse” that began in 2021 and was created by “Blue’s Clues” veterans Traci Paige Johnson and Jennifer Twomey. In this movie adventure, Gabby goes on a road trip with her grandma to the “urban wonderland” of Cat Francisco, but unfortunately has her dollhouse taken be the evil, eccentric cat lady named Vera. Can the manage to save the dollhouse before it’s too late? I’m not sure exactly what to compare this one to, outside maybe something like “My Little Pony: The Movie,” which opened to $8.9 million in October 2017, but we have had a lack of family affair recently at the box office for parents to take the kids to. This audience was spoiled in May and June with “Lilo & Stitch,” “How to Train Your Dragon” and “Elio,” but there wasn’t much in July or August, and outside this title, the next big family film isn’t really until “Zootopia 2” on Thanksgiving, so theoretically speaking the market is ready. Although there was *something* in July and that was “Smurfs,” which was mostly ignored to the tune of an $11.1 million opening. Considering the 2011 movie earned $563 million worldwide, I’m sure Paramount was hoping for a tad bit more with that one. Moral of the story, an open market doesn’t guarantee success. And with the very specific niche audience for “Gabby’s Dollhouse,” perhaps the $8-11 million range is correct.

The movie we end this preview on is the sequel to a movie that perhaps you forgot existed. That movie is The Strangers: Chapter 2. This is the middle chapter in a planned trilogy. Chapter 1 opened in May 2024 to $11.8 million, finishing with $35.2 million domestically and $47.4 million worldwide. That’s actually not terrible considering the production budget was only $8.5 million. This is how we have long-running horror franchises, despite terrible reviews and poor box office totals. The bar for financial success is really low. The general premise with “The Strangers” is that it’s a psychological home invasion horror series. A trio of masked psychopaths break into a young couple’s home and terrorize them. That’s basically it. The series began in 2008 with “The Strangers,” which had mixed critical reception initially, but has since developed into somewhat of a cult classic. The sequel in 2018, “The Strangers: Prey at Night,” not so much. And now we’re journeying down this road of a new trilogy, which promises to eventually go in “new and unexpected ways,” as well as exploring the background of where the killers came from. Whether or not this is successful at that is to be determined, but that’s at least the goal. Chapter 1 didn’t get off to a great start, earning a Rotten Tomatoes score of 21 percent and barely feeling like it was part of any sort of conversation last year, despite the box office performance that was good enough for its budget. That doesn’t provide a ton of good will for Chapter 2, making it seem like the first movie’s $11.8 million is the ceiling rather than the floor, but we’ll see if there are enough fans that show up anyways.

Movie Preview: August 2025

It was a wonderful, incredible, stupendous month at the July box office. And yes, I did just avoid the three obvious adjectives this time around. July was a month that was quality over quantity, that meaning a small handful of major releases as opposed to a bunch of small to medium sized releases. And the discussion we went into the month asking was how many $100 million openers were we going to get. Were “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” “Superman,” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” all going to hit that mark or was one of them going to get overshadowed?

The technical answer is that two of them opened above $100 million – the two superhero movies. With nearly identical openings, too. “Superman” at $125.0 million and “The Fantastic Four” at $117.6 million. “Jurassic World: Rebirth” opened slightly below the mark with $92.0 million, but that’s only because it opened on a Wednesday. It’s 5-day opening was $147.8 million. And given that it got the head start over the other two, in regards to in-month box office totals, it is the July winner with $308.9 million. Although “Superman” was right behind it with $302.4 million and is on pace to sneak past it soon. “The Fantastic Four” only had one weekend in the July box office, so it’s ensuing weekends are yet to be determined. The upcoming month will help determine which of these will ultimately win out in regards to their final totals as all three will likely to continue to be a strong presence throughout August, which is currently looking like the exact opposite of July. A good number of small to medium sized releases with not a lot of major title. Overall in July, the domestic box office came out to be $1.111 billion, the first month of the year to hit the billion mark. A far cry from the highest July ever, but an impressive mark nonetheless. Theaters, studios, and audiences alike all seem like they won.

But yes, now we move onto August, the final month of the summer that always serves as a cool-down month. August through October historically are the low points of the year for the box office, in between the summer and the holiday movie seasons. But honestly, these smaller months are oftentimes the funner months to explore. Lots of titles to learn about and share, even if their prognostication isn’t great. There’s often diamonds in the rough to find if you’re willing to put in the effort to find them instead of only seeing the major releases. So here’s what August has in store!

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

August 1 – 3

DreamWorks' "The Bad Guys 2"

The first weekend of August will see three newcomers enter the race, although the top spot will easily be taken by “The Fantastic Four” in its second weekend. I’m typing this post on Saturday, August 2, so in the middle of this weekend, so I have a bit more insight after seeing the Friday estimates. Despite great reviews and seemingly solid word of mouth, “The Fantastic Four” is in for a bit of a surprise tumble in weekend No. 2 as it looks to crash 60+ percent. For comparison, “Superman,” after opening to $125 million, fell just 53 percent in weekend No. 2 to make $58.5 million. It seems natural to look at that as a comparison and project “The Fantastic Four” to fall in the $50-55 million range. However, it’s instead looking at a total closer to $40 million, which will still be enough for No. 1 on the weekend, but it will wind up being a closer race than initially anticipated.

Of the three newcomers, two of them are currently in a battle for second place, but with the Friday totals in, it looks like the winner of this battle will be The Bad Guys 2, the latest animated feature from DreamWorks Animation. This is a sequel to “The Bad Buys,” which was a bit of a sleeper hit in the first half of 2022. It was a movie about a group of villainous animals who were working on reforming their act in order to become… good guys. And now the updated challenge in this sequel, after having turned things around, is an unexpected group of challengers…. The Bad Girls. The movie initially had a softer opening of $23.9 million, but also scored a Rotten Tomatoes score of 88 percent from critics, which also came with good word of mouth for its target audience, helping it leg out to $97.5 million domestically and $250.8 million worldwide. Prior to seeing any weekend results, I would’ve naturally pointed to that $23.9 million opening of the first as a gauge for what this sequel might do, while also looking at recent DreamWorks openings of “Dog Man” ($36.0 million) and “The Wild Robot” ($35.8 million) as the potential ceiling. Initial Friday totals have it slightly above “The Bad Guys,” while slightly below the other two, for a final weekend total somewhere in the range of $25-35 million, depending on how it holds over the weekend. And with a budget of only $80 million, that’s a good enough start to be seen as a success, especially if word of mouth among family audiences gives it another healthy run throughout August.

The competition here for the No. 2 spot of the weekend is on the opposite side of the spectrum in regards to target audience and that is the comedy The Naked Gun. This is a franchise that dates back to 1982 as the 1988 movie “The Naked Gun” was a spin-off of the 1982 TV series “Police Squad!” The TV show lasted just one season and six episodes before ABC canceled it, but the 1988 movie revived it and then spawned two sequels, “The Naked Gun 2½: The Smell of Fear” in 1991 and “The Naked Gun 33⅓: The Final Insult” in 1994. While the third movie was intended to be the final movie, you can, of course, never trust Hollywood when they say something is the final chapter, not even when they put that in the title of the movie. A fourth movie has been in various stages of production since 2009. It took them a bit to figure things out, but what they landed on was a legacy sequel with a new cast, led by Liam Neeson as Lt. Frank Drebin Jr., the son of Lt. Frank Drebin, who was played by Leslie Nielsen in the first three movies. Joining Liam Neeson in this movie are the likes of Pamela Anderson, Paul Walter Hauser, Kevin Durand, and Danny Huston, as the gang is coming together to try to prevent the closer of the Police Sqaud. The idea of this franchise is fast-paced, slapstick, spoof comedy and so far this appears to be working as it currently carries a 90 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes. This was initially prognosticated as the potential highest opening new release, with $20-30 million or more on the opening. But as the weekend has arrived, it’s looking to hit more in the $15-20 million after a $6.3 million start on Friday. But if word of mouth is as strong as initial critic reviews, this could have decent legs as the month progresses

The final movie of the weekend is a movie that got a head start on the weekend, opening on Wednesday, and is thus technically a July release. Although it’s official opening weekend lands here in August and that is the horror film Together. This has been a buzzy release coming out of Sundance this year, visiting the South by Southwest Film Festival in March along the way. NEON purchased it and has put together a successful marketing campaign to get horror fans excited. The movie stars real-life couple Dave Franco and Alison Brie as a fictional couple in this movie who are struggling a bit with their relationship. After falling into a mysterious pit and drinking what they think is just normal water, they start growing closer together in more than just an emotional way. The movie does get rather intense with its body horror, much like “The Substance” from last year, so this is intended for more of a niche audience rather than a mainstream horror audience, and comes from first-time filmmaker Michael Shanks, who had previously worked on various shorts before diving into this as his first feature-length film. Given that it was a Wednesday opening, it has currently made $6.3 million in its first three days and is looking at an official opening weekend in the $5-8 million range, for a 5-day total around the realm of $10 million. The movie currently holds a 91 percent from critics, so those who have seen it so far have mostly enjoyed their experience, although it could wind up as more divisive among mainstream audiences who aren’t aware of what they’re getting themselves into, as shown by the slightly lower 78 percent audience score on Rotten Tomatoes.

August 8 – 10

Disney's "Freakier Friday"

With a steeper than expected second weekend drop for “The Fantastic Four,” that should lead to an open competition for the top spot this weekend. The most likely scenario sees Disney handing the baton off to… themselves, with their release of Freakier Friday, the sequel to the 2003 hit “Freaky Friday,” which starred Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan as a mother and daughter who swapped places. And now in this sequel, 22 years have passed and lightning has struck twice. Except this time it’s more than just mother and daughter. Lindsay Lohan’s character has a daughter of her own and is about to get remarried to another guy, who also has a daughter of his own. As the families prepare to unite, grandmother, mother, daughter, and step-daughter all swap and have to go on an adventure to figure out how to get back into their own bodies and learn what lesson they need to learn. The first movie in 2003 earned $22.2 million, but held very well to finish with $110.2 million and has remained a favorite among fans of Disney. If you adjust those numbers for ticket price inflation, they equal $41.6 million and $206.7 million. Does “Freakier Friday” have the potential to match those numbers and be a late summer hit? Box Office Pro seems to think so. Their long range forecast put it in the $40-50 million range for its opening. My gut instinct is that those numbers are a bit high and that an opening closer to the unadjusted total of the original seems more realistic ($20-30 million). But nostalgia could very well boost this into becoming a hit. Jamie Lee Curtis is now an Oscar winner and Lindsay Lohan is in the midst of a career resurgence. And if the cards hit right, this could be the movie that dominates the rest of the month.

There is competition, though, and that comes via a movie that has been building more and more momentum in the last few weeks, and that’s the latest horror movie from Warner Bros., Weapons. This comes from writer/director Zach Cregger, who built quite the name for himself with the 2022 horror film “Barbarian,” which was praised by many horror fans as one of the best recent horror films, which has thus led horror fans to be very excited about his next movie, “Weapons.” The poster itself describes the movies plot: “Last night at 2:17 a.m., every child from Mrs. Grandy’s class woke up, got out of bed, went downstairs, opened the front door, walked into the dark… and they never came back.” Mrs. Grandy is played by Julia Garner in the movie and she’s joined by Josh Brolin, Alden Ahrenreich, Benedict Wong, and others. The town is trying to figure out what happened to these kids and what went wrong. Outside of the buzz from “Barbarian” and Zach Cregger, the movie itself has had very strong initial reviews. Only 17 counted on Rotten Tomatoes as me typing this. But all of them have been positive, giving it an early 100 percent score that the marketing has taken advantage of to build up buzz. Social media reaction seemed quite strong, too. This all leads to what seems like the potential for a breakout hit. “Barbarian” itself opened to just $10.5 million, so there’s no guarantee of huge success, but it does seem to have the potential to open in the $20-30 million range, which movies like “Smile,” “The Black Phone” and “Longlegs” debuted in. The highest opening for a horror film this year has been “Final Destination: Bloodlines” at $51.6 million, followed by “Sinners” with $48.0 million and “28 Years Later” with $30.0 million, so it’s been a good year for horror that “Weapons” looks to continue.

While the main battle of the weekend will be “Freakier Friday” and “Weapons” fighting to knock of “The Fantastic Four,” further down the list will be a movie simply looking to land a spot somewhere in the top 10 and that is Sketch, the latest movie from Angel Studios. This movie is a fantasy comedy that sees a widowed father trying his best to raise his two kids when the daughter drops her sketch book into a magical pond and results in all of the monsters from her sketch book to come to life. Like “Weapons,” early reviews also have this movie at a 100 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, but that’s also just with 18 reviews counted. While neither is likely to stay at that mark, that’s still a good early sign in regards to audience reaction to the film. Angel Studios in the last few years has been extremely with their releasing a wide variety of different small to medium budgeted films. They’ve had a couple of breakouts now with “Sound of Freedom” and “The King of Kings,” but many of their movies have also consistently landed in the $10-20 million range with their final domestic totals. The $5-8 million range for openings seems to be the average. Although outside “The King of Kings,” their other three movies from 2025 have been on the lower range of their openings, that being “Brave the Dark” ($2.3 million), “Rule Breakers” ($1.5 million), and “The Last Rodeo” ($5.4 million).

August 15 – 17

Universal's "Nobody 2"

This is the part of August where things become murky and tricky to predict. Whatever happened in the battle of “Freakier Friday” vs. “Weapons” in the weekend before is likely to be what also headlines this weekend. And the weekend after, too. Four new movies get added to the mix this weekend and only one of them looks to be a real contender to even debut in the top 5 and that movie is Nobody 2. In 2021, “Nobody” took a page out of the John Wick book by delivering a stylistic action movie led by a middle aged man who was once a part of a secret organization and is trying to put that behind him, only for it to come back to the forefront. Bob Odenkirk was the lead role of the movie and he had a family to protect when his past came back to haunt him. The movie wasn’t a huge hit, opening to just $6.8 million in March 2021. Although the box office was still very much in COVID recovery phase at that time. Very few things were a hit. People who saw it generally liked it, though. And it had a very minimal budget of just $16 million, so it earning $57.5 million worldwide was enough for Universal to greenlight this sequel. This time around, Bob Odenkirk’s character is on a vacation when more shenanigans happen. And… nobody ruins his vacation. Projections are in about the $8-12 million range, which would be an improvement on the original, although perhaps Universal would hope for a tad bit more given that we’re four years later and the state of cinema has returned to a relatively normal phase compared to early 2021.

Like I mentioned, the rest of these movies this weekend are not likely to make much of an impact on the charts. They might even be in the realm of a moderate release in a few hundred theaters rather than a full wide release of 1,000+, but we’ll see. In that context, it does seem awfully strange that one of these movies that is poised to barely register is the latest from director Spike Lee, Highest 2 Lowest. Spike’s last two feature-length films were “BlacKkKlansman” in 2018 and “Da 5 Bloods” in 2020, both of which were awards players. “BlacKkKlansman” even won Spike his Oscar. So it seems a bit strange that Apple is quietly dumping this in the middle of August, with A24 handling the theatrical release, before putting it up on Apple TV+ in early September. It seems like they would want to make some sort of awards push, even on name recognition alone. But anyways, speaking of awards prestige, the movie also stars Denzel Washington, winner of two Oscars and nominated for quite a bit more. The movie is an English-language remake or reinterpretation of Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film “High and Low,” which itself is loosely based on the 1959 novel “King’s Ransom.” The original novel centers around the moral dilemma faced by a wealthy man when he is forced to choose between using his wealth to fulfill a personal ambition or saving the life a kidnapped child. Both adaptations are loosely based on that idea, but seem to include a similar moral dilemma. Early reviews are so far pretty good at 89 percent.

Lionsgate will also be joining the party this weekend as they release the crime thriller Americana, a movie that has sat on the shelf for over two years. It initially debuted at the South by Southwest Film Festival in March 2023. Lionsgate acquired the distribution rights to the film a year later and is now just getting around to putting it out. Oftentimes, late August is one of the times of the year that’s more of a dumping ground for studios as they get some of their lesser titles out of the way. That’s what this very much feels like. That said, this movie has a stacked cast with the likes of Sydney Sweeney, Paul Walter Hauser, Halsey, Simon Rex, Eric Dane, and Zahn McClarnon, and also has quite the wacky premise that’s a crime thriller, action, modern Western centered around several people’s lived being intertwined in a death match fighting over an expensive ghost shirt. The reaction from those who saw it was generally positive, although somewhat muted. So there’s a chance that this movie could provide some solid entertainment in the doldrums of late August, even though it’s not expected to break the $5 million mark at the box office.

And the final movie listed by the-numbers.com as a wide release is one of those movies that I’m not 100 percent sure is a movie that really exists, if you know what I mean. It’s a movie that’s officially titled Eli Roth Presents: Jimmy and Stiggs. Despite having Eli Roth’s name in the title and posted heavily over the trailer, this is a movie where Eli Roth is merely serving as executive producer. I honestly can’t find a ton of information on this, but this might be a case where Eli Roth’s production company is helping produce or release this. The movie itself is written and directed by Joe Begos, who is known for movies like “Christmas Bloody Christmas,” “VFW,” and “Bliss,” all low-budget splatter fests that are unrated. The trailer I found for “Jimmy and Stiggs” only has 60,000 views and the movie doesn’t have a Wikipedia page, but it might be sneaking into a few theaters near you. The trailer here is certainly quite the wild ride, so it’s the type of movie that might find a niche audience somewhere.

August 22 – 24

Focus Features' "Honey Don't!"

I mentioned at the beginning of last section that whatever wins the battle of “Freakier Friday” vs. “Weapons” might be the headline of that weekend… and the weekend after, too. That’s because “the weekend after,” this current weekend here, only has one new wide release, Ethan Coen’s Honey Don’t!, which does have quite the stacked lineup of Margaret Qualley, Chris Evans, Aubrey Plaza, and Charlie Day. The Coen Brothers have a long history of successful in the realm of cinema and I’m sure they’ll get back together to make another collaboration at some point, but right now they’re doing their own thing. Joel got serious in 2021 with his adaptation of “The Tragedy of Macbeth,” but Ethan recently has been in the comedy realm with “Drive-Away Dolls” last year and now “Honey Don’t!” this year. This one specifically is labeled as a neo-noir dark comedy and is about a small-town private investigator who delves into a series of strange deaths tied to a mysterious church. Ethan wrote this with his wife Tricia Cooke and the two of them have stated that they wanted to do a trilogy of “lesbian B-movies,” of which this one would be No. 2 in that after “Drive-Away Dolls.” About “Honey Don’t!,” Tricia Cooke stated that they wanted to make a film noir with a lesbian lead character. So they did! However, “Drive-Away Dolls” wasn’t quite the success they were probably hoping for as it only opened to $2.4 million and lasted just three weeks in theaters before getting dumped and finishing with just over $5 million domestically. That doesn’t bode well for movie No. 2 in this trilogy here, especially since reviews are coming in as fairly mixed as it currently holds a 43 percent Rotten Tomatoes score. So I wouldn’t bank on this making much of an impact.

Might there be more that does come out this weekend, at least in a moderate release? It seems odd for just one small release and that’s it. GKIDS will be re-releasing “Ponyo” in theaters on August 23. A24 is handling another re-release of “Ne Zha 2,” this being a dubbed release here in the states. Ron Howard has a psychological thriller called “Eden” scheduled for limited release. That movie stars Jude Law, Ana de Armas, Vanessa Kirby, Daniel Bruhl, and Sydney Sweeney and is about a group of outsiders settling on a remote island, theoretically based on factual events. MUBI has the crime drama “Lurker” that was released at Sundance this year. So one or more of these might end up taking more theaters, but I’m not sure which ones it’ll be.

August 29 – September 1

Sony's "Caught Steeling"

The fifth and final weekend in August is the 4-day holiday weekend of Labor Day in the United States, as Labor Day falls right on Monday, September 1 this year. Labor Day in the past has been seen as box office poison, but that turned out to be more of a self-fulling prophesy as movies like “Shang-Chi” and “The Equalizer 3” in recent years have proven that you can do well this weekend if you actually try. Will this be a Labor Day weekend that will find success or will it be holdovers again that stay on top of the charts?

I honestly am not sure at this point, but if there is a new movie that has potential to take the box office crown, it’s Darren Aronofsky’s Caught Steeling, a movie primarily led by Austin Butler in the lead role, but also includes Regina King, Zoe Kravitz, Matt Smith, Liev Schreiber, Vincent D’Onofrio, and... as the poster officially says… Benito Martinez Ocasio (aka Bad Bunny). The movie sees Aronofsky diving into the crime thriller realm, telling the story of a former baseball player finding himself immersed in the criminal underworld of New York in the 1990s. Aronofsky’s films tend to lean on the more challenging realm with serious themes and troubled characters. He’s not one to make a happy, feel-good movie for mainstream audiences. Movies like “Requiem for a Dream,” “The Wrestler,” “Black Swan,” “Mother!,” and “The Whale” showcase his darker, divisive style, so we’ll see what he has in store with “Caught Steeling,” which does seem to have a more mainstream feel. Sony has been pushing it quite a bit in their marketing, too. It’s hard to find a comparison in terms of what this has the potential to do because most of Aronofsky’s films are smaller releases or slow roll-outs, with “Noah” being the one major exception. Perhaps “Mickey 17” from this year is a comparison, with Bong Joon Ho teaming up with Warner Bros. That movie opened to $19 million back in March, but I’m curious to see what this has in store.

Another movie with decent potential that has been advertised quite a bit is the comedy The Roses, with Benedict Cumberbatch and Olivia Colman in the lead roles. The two of them play a pitch perfect couple with everything seemingly going right, but, as Searchlight describes, underneath the facade of the perfect family is a tinderbox of competition and resentments that’s ignited when Theo’s (Cumberbatch) professional dreams come crashing down. The movie is an adaptation of the 1981 novel “The War of the Roses,” which was adapted into the 1989 movie of the same name starring Michael Douglas and Kathleen Turner as the lead couple. Directing this adaptation is Jay Roach, who early on directed the Austin Powers trilogy, along with “Meet the Parents,” “Meet the Fockers,” and “Dinner for Schmucks.” Two of his more recent films include “Trumbo” and “Bombshell.” The movie is written by Tony McNamara, who recently has written screenplays for “Poor Things,” “Cruella,” and “The Favourite.” The exact potential of this movie is also something that I’m not sure of, but recently comedy has struggled to find an audience in the theatrical market, even with a good cast and crew. My gut instinct says this feels like something that’ll open in the $10-15 range, but I’m not certain.

“Caught Steeling” and “The Roses” look to be the two main new releases this holiday, but one movie floating under the surface will be the release of The Toxic Avenger, a slightly different type of superhero film. This is based off of the 1984 cult classic, which was initially ignored, but eventually caught on within the next few years and wound up spawning three sequels, a stage musical, a comic book series, a video game, and an animated television series. The general idea is that the main character is a janitor who falls into a pit of toxic waste and is transformed into a deformed monster that sets out to do good and get back at all the people who wronged him. The new movie is also labeled as a black comedy and a splatter film and came close to not being released. It initially premiered at the Fantastic Fest in September 2023, but then had a hard time finding a distributor due to its gore and graphic content. It was eventually picked up by Cineverse who is planning on releasing it as unrated, thus one also might see it titled “The Toxic Avenger Unrated.” Even though it has gotten it’s official release, that still makes it hard to sell for audiences, meaning this might be targeting a specific niche audience rather than something that’s poised for a breakout.

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.