A typically slow New Year’s Eve at the box office did little to boost the industry on the last movie day of the year, and although a year-end rebound of Avatar: Fire and Ash helped the 2025 domestic box office surpass last year’s revenue, it still fell short of analysts’ prediction of $9 billion.
Key facts:
Domestic ticket sales reached $8.87 billion in 2025, industry publications reported, up 1.5% from 2024 domestic revenue but still below most analysts’ $9 billion projection.
The movie business has yet to fully recover from the COVID-19 pandemic, before which it regularly generated more than $11 billion a year, although it has improved significantly from $4.5 billion in 2021 and $7.5 billion in 2022.
Avatar: Fire and Ashthe third film in James Cameron’s blockbuster franchise, gave the year-end box office a boost with domestic revenue of $242 million and nearly $1 billion worldwide since its December 19 release.
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Avatar was the box office winner on New Year’s Eve with $8.1 million on Wednesday, followed by Zootopia 2 (4.6 million), Marty Supreme (2.4 million) and David (2.38 million). Three films surpassed $1 billion at the international box office in 2025: Ne Zha 2 (2.15 billion), Zootopia 2 (1.46 billion) and Lilo & Stitch (1 billion).
A Minecraft movie Jack Black’s film was the highest-grossing domestic film with $423.9 million in the United States, followed by Lilo & Stitch with 423.8 million and Superman with 354.2 million.
Highest-grossing movies of 2025 in the United States (comscore):
A Minecraft Movie — $423,949,195
Lilo & Stitch — $423,778,855
Superman — $354,184,465
Jurassic World Rebirth — $339,640,400
Wicked: For Good — $312,144,610
Why did the 2025 box office fall short of projections?
Although some successful films, mainly children’s films, helped fuel the box office recovery, several big-name films were flops. Thunderbolts Marvel’s film grossed less than $200 million and didn’t make the top 10 of the year. Snow Whitewhich was involved in controversy due to its protagonist and the representation of the dwarfs, among other aspects, did not recover its budget. Elio from Pixar, the biopic of Bruce Springsteen A Complete Unknown y M3GAN 2.0 They also did not meet expectations at the box office.
This article was originally published on Forbes US
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