The 5 Biggest Winners Of The Summer 2025 Box Office

The summer movie season is officially behind us. Though it may not feel like fall in most of the U.S., the industry at large is ready for a fresh start, with a pretty anemic Labor Day weekend at the box office signaling a changing of the seasons for Hollywood. It also capped off an uneven chunk of the year for the theatrical side of the business, with wildly high highs and depressingly low lows. That is, unfortunately, the way it has largely been in the pandemic era: unpredictable and filled with valleys in between the peaks.

Summer 2025 was no exception. The overall summer box office failed (by a wide margin) to crack the $4 billion mark despite early projections to the contrary. Be that as it may, there are several reasons to celebrate. With several movies over-performing against expectations, films that were once destined to go directly to streaming doing gangbusters business in theaters, and new avenues opening up, several olive branches of optimism for the future have extended themselves over the last few months.

As we head into fall, we're going to look back at the summer box office and break down the five biggest winners of the season. We're not going to be discussing individual movies as much as we're going to be talking about the bigger winners in a more general sense — from studios making surprising comebacks to genres leading the way when all else fails. Let's dive in.

If there were a singular winner this summer, it would probably be IMAX. The format has been around for decades, but in the pandemic era, the "eventized" nature of moviegoing has led the smaller number of people who still regularly go to the movies to seek out premium experiences. This summer was no different, as the likes of "Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning," "F1," and even "Weapons" all made a lot of extra cash thanks to people paying to see those movies in IMAX.

But it's important to point out that it's not just IMAX anymore, with competing premium formats such as Dolby Cinema increasing their market share constantly. Case in point: "Jurassic World Rebirth" couldn't secure an IMAX release, but Dolby Cinema accounted for an outsized chunk of the movie's grosses. There are other premium formats gaining traction too, including Cinemark XD and 4DX.

All of these formats are becoming increasingly popular with people taking the whole "see it on the biggest screen possible" thing very seriously. IMAX can make up as much as 20% of the total box office for certain movies, which is a big deal. At a time when fewer people are going to the movies, the fact that these more expensive, premium experiences are thriving is a positive sign. Premium may well be the dominant future of exhibition, and this summer truly helped cement that as fact. IMAX and other companies getting into this space are winning in a big way right now. 

Disney has been making a fortune for 15 years — dating back to Tim Burton's $1 billion "Alice in Wonderland" — by remaking classics from its library of animated films. And while that continued to be the case for the Mouse House in 2025, this was also the year that the live-action remake trend extended beyond the walls of a single studio, as Universal released a live-action take on "How to Train Your Dragon" this summer. It turns out, this is a play that others can execute as well.

While Disney suffered a massive misfire with "Snow White" ($205 million worldwide) earlier this year, the studio rebounded in a big way with the live-action remake of "Lilo & Stitch," which stands as the only $1 billion movie from a Hollywood studio in 2025 thus far. With $1.03 billion globally, the film is second only to the Chinese animated smash hit "Ne Zha 2" ($2.1 billion) at the 2025 global box office. Needless to say, Disney won't be stopping with these remakes anytime soon, as "Lilo & Stitch 2" has already been announced.

But then there's "How to Train Your Dragon." With original director Dean DeBlois returning, the remake resonated with new and old fans alike. It went on to pull in $630 million worldwide, with more than 58% of that sum coming from overseas. This franchise is very popular, and Universal believed it could go from animation to live-action successfully, which it has. Once again, a sequel is now in the works.

It's clear, in other words, that these remakes are good for business, and it's only a matter of time before other studios get in on this gravy train as well. Indeed, as much as some folks feel the entire practice of remaking animated hits in live-action is creatively bankrupt, there's undeniably a crowd eager to watch these films, at least when they're executed correctly. Ultimately, these movies won big this summer by doing right by their respective audiences.

When the Covid-19 pandemic arrived in 2020, it upended the industry as we know it. Theaters all around the world closed for months on end, leading Hollywood at large to double down, if not triple down, on streaming as the future. Things have since rationalized a bit, with studios trying to find a balance between serving their streaming divisions while also cashing in at the box office. But Summer 2025 helped cement one inarguable truth: Big direct-to-streaming movies simply don't make sense anymore.

"Lilo & Stitch" wasn't just the biggest movie of the summer, it was also originally envisioned as a Disney+ exclusive before Disney wisely changed course. The studio did the same thing for "Freakier Friday," which is now coming up on $140 million at the worldwide box office against a sub-$50 million budget. And not to go back in time, but both "Moana 2" ($1.05 billion) and "Alien: Romulus" ($350 million) were huge hits that similarly shifted from being direct-to-streaming titles to hitting theaters first. A pattern is developing. 

Fortunately, it's not just Disney. Warner Bros. did precisely the same thing with "Final Destination Bloodlines," which made $301 million worldwide, setting up another sequel in the long-running franchise. It's also by far the highest-grossing entry in the property to date and, not for nothing, has since been trending in the most-watched charts on HBO Max — meaning that its box office run, if anything, only helped increase its profile on streaming. Even Netflix's "KPop Demon Hunters" made $19 million and topped the box office with just a two-day run to help round out the summer, and that movie had already been available on the streamer for months. 

These movies sent a signal to the industry: Making a big film like this and sending it directly to a streaming service makes zero sense financially.

Not every horror movie is going to knock it out of the park. To be sure, 2025 has seen its fair share of disappointments in that department, with Blumhouse being hit particularly hard as "Wolf Man" and "M3GAN 2.0" bombed against high expectations. But the summer season proved once again why horror is the most reliable genre at the box office, even with the ups and downs of it all taken into account.

Sony successfully brought a zombie franchise back from the dead with "28 Years Later," which pulled in $150 million worldwide and already has a sequel, "The Bone Temple," due in theaters next January. Then there's the aforementioned "Final Destination Bloodlines," which is second only to Ryan Coogler's "Sinners" ($366 million worldwide) as far as outright horror movies go in 2025. To whatever degree once considers "Jurassic World Rebirth" and its whopping $856 million global haul horror, that's also significant. Dinosaurs snacking on people and mutant monsters at the very least promises horror-lite thrills for the PG-13 crowd. Audiences continue to eat it up.

Then there's the phenomenon that is Zach Cregger's "Weapons," which is coming up on $240 million worldwide, as of this writing, topping three of its first four weekends in theaters. That's not to mention specialty releases such as the "Jaws" re-release, "Clown in a Cornfield," or the "Shin Godzilla" 4K release, which helped bring out hardcore fans for other genre fare. Even a perceived misfire like "I Know What You Did Last Summer" quietly pulled in nearly $65 million globally against a reasonable $18 million budget.

As superheroes are struggling more and more at the box office, the industry is looking for answers to shore up the future. Though the films they adore don't always hit, horror lovers continue to be amongst the most faithful moviegoers out there. Cater well to them, and they will reward you kindly.

Disney may have made the most money out of any studio at the domestic box office this summer, but there is no question that Warner Bros. came out on top when taking the whole picture into account. As mentioned, it had massive horror hits, with "Final Destination Bloodlines" kicking off the summer with a bang and going on to make more than $300 million worldwide. "Weapons" is now similarly poised to make closer to $300 million than $200 million when all's said and done — and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

"Superman" also made well over $600 million worldwide and helped ensure that the new DC Universe can work. Along the way, it even outgrossed all of this year's Marvel Cinematic Universe films, including "Captain America: Brave New World" ($415 million), "Thunderbolts*" ($382 million), and "The Fantastic Four: First Steps" ($508 million). Not only that, WB also scored the biggest original theatrical success of 2025 with "F1," which is currently sitting at $614 million worldwide. Yes, it's an Apple production, but WB handled distribution and, safe to say, that was a wise move for all involved.

Even though Disney came out on top at the summer box office thanks to "Lilo & Stitch," flops like "Elio" ($153 million worldwide) and "Thunderbolts*" complicate things. Warner Bros., meanwhile, was batting one thousand for the summer season, which made up for high-profile misfires earlier in the year such as "Mickey 17" and "The Alto Knights." WB film chiefs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy have earned some job security, to be certain. 

The global box office may never fully recover from the pandemic, but WB has found a winning strategy that includes original films, budgets of varying sizes, and movies made by a variety of filmmakers. Nobody else did it better this summer.