In planning TheGamer’s juicy feast of content for this final week of the year, I wrote a fairly typical article onwhich movies to look out for next year. In doing so, I realised that there were a lot of moviesby respected auteurs releasing in cinemas, and not all that many blockbusters. It seemed, especially after old IP faltered andnewer, more creative IP movies shone in 2023, that there might have been a changing of the guard. Then I looked ahead to 2025, to see if this theory holds up. Instead, like Aquaman’s box office, it’s dead in the water.
For some reason, major blockbusters are taking 2024 off, ready to level cities anew in 2025. It’s an odd situation - 2023’s strike meant a lot of delays, but the biggest victims of this were Dune, Ghostbusters, and Challengers. The first is a union of IP blockbuster and auteur talent, the second is a B-tier blockbuster at best, and the third is an Oscar-challenging romantic drama about the nature of betrayal. 2024 could be a great year, and as those articles I linked to above suggest, it’s a year I’m very excited about. I just can’t figure out why 2025 is already so stacked.
Looking at 2024, my predictions for the top ten at the box office are:
I don’t think Ghostbusters will make it, but that’s less a sign of how good the year is and more a reflection of both the 2016 reboot and the unreboot of Afterlife failing to clear $250 million. Inside Out 2 could get Toy Story 4 numbers, or it could do Elemental numbers. Deadpool 3 could be a continuation of Marvel’s downfall, or its revival. Mufasa will not hit The Lion King’s box office returns and will be lucky to clear The Little Mermaid. The sequels to Dune, Joker, and Gladiator are probably relying on quality for legs, but there’s a very real chance none of these movies join the billion-dollar club.
Compare this to 2025, where my early predictions (with more movies to come) would be:
You might look at that list and be unimpressed. I get it -Avataraside, there’s nothing you would expect to come close to the level of artistry in Dune. Even then, leaving out Avatar you might say that Furisoa, Gladiator, and Joker have 2025 beat too. Those are all movies that could be nominated for Oscars (the movies they’re following all were), while those on 2025’s block probably won’t.
I’m personally skittish on the successes of Blade, Moana, and Thunderbolts, but they also have potential if done well.
But I see one nailed-on billion dollar hit (obviously Avatar), and the rest of the top five have a chance too. It’s a generous prediction, but not an outlandish one, while the movies of 2024 would need to break a trend to hit that number. You could also look at previous Fantastic Four movies and point out that I judged Ghostbusters too harshly, but this has always been a billion dollar hit waiting to happen, although Marvel could be on course for a less-than-fantastic fourth fumble in a row with this team.
There’s also the fact that the more artistically driven behemoths like Furisoa and Joker don’t always have their release dates announced so far in advance, so it’s likely we’ll see some movies closer to Dune’s stature on the roster by this time next year. And of course, how much money a movie makes should never really concern the average filmgoer, no more than they should care about Rotten Tomatoes scores. But it’s interesting nonetheless that 2024’s most profit-likely movie is a holdover from 2023, while 2025 boasts Avatar,Batman,Superman,Star Wars, and Tom Cruise running his little action socks off, plus twoMarvelteam-ups, aPixaroriginal, a legacyDisneylive-action, a highly popular modern Disney live-action, and an adaptation of the most popular video game on the planet.
It makes it even more important to support those creative movies by your favourite directors in 2024, because 2025 has a lot of movies that will win by default. If we want to see fresh ideas in cinemas, we should see them in 2024 before the deluge of popcorn in 2025.
