Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 4/1/2025

Hello everyone,

WELCOME TO THE END OF THE FIRST QUARTER OF 2025.  Time is just flying by.

BOX OFFICE:  This past weekend was a race between the 2nd weekend of “Snow White” and the new action movie “A Working Man”.  In the end “Snow White” fell approx. two thirds of its opening weekend gross to $14.3 million for #2 so “A Working Man” won the weekend with $15.5 million for #1.  The independent religious movie “The Chosen Last Supper” did fairly well making $11.75 million for #3, the mew thriller “The Woman in the Yard” was #4 with $9.4 million, and the fantasy “Death of a Unicorn” was #5 with approx. $5.8 million.

Thanks to all the new releases, the overall domestic box office was $77 million which is just 3% higher than the previous weekends domestic total because all the new movies put together did about as well as last weekends “Snow White” opening weekend.

Overall, for the 1st quarter of 2025 things are approx. 11% lower than 2024.  Last year in the first quarter, there were 3 movies with over $50 million on opening weekend – “Dune Part 2” ($82.5 million), “Kung Fu Panda 4” ($58 million), and “Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire” ($80 million).   This year there was only 1 movie – “Captain America: Brave New World” ($88 million 3-day opening).

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: “Snow White” managed to stay #1 at the international box office making $22.1 in foreign countries (approx. 48% drop from the opening weekend) for a global total approaching $150 million.  “A Working Man” made approx. $15 million in foreign countries for a global box office of $30.2 million.

The global box office first quarter is WAY ahead of the first quarter of 2024 thanks to the blockbuster (at least in China) “Ne Zha 2”.  Even “Super Marios Bros Movie” in 2023 only made $1.36 billion.  The last movie to do better than that movie is “Avatar The Way of Water” at the end of 2022.

RELEASE CHANGES:

You’re going to need to wait a little longer for the movie Trey Parker and Matt Stone (creators of “South Park”) are making with rapper Kendrick Lamar.  They just pushed the release date from July 4 this year to March 20, 2026

CINEMACON NEWS:  The annual CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas started today.  Some early news….

It seems like the biggest thing on everyone’s mind is to increase the exclusive theatrical window.  It had been shortened to as little as 17 days during the pandemic (for the movies that didn’t open the same day in theaters and on streaming) but now people like the head of AMC theater chain and the head of Cinema United (formerly called NATO) are saying it should be expanded again to get people back in movie theaters.

Thanks to the $2 billion+ “Ne Zha 2” right before CinemaCon started they raised the predicted global box office for this year from $33 billion to $34.1 billion.

Sony Pictures started off the convention with their presentation.  Some notable announcements…

  • The next live action “Spider Man” movie starring Tom Holland will be called “Spider-Man: Brand New Day”.  It comes out summer 2026.
  • Sony brought out Jennifer Love Hewitt and showed some scenes from this summers “I Know What You Did Last Summer” reboot.
  • Director Cregger spoke about his upcoming reboot/sequel to the “Resident Evil” movies which he says will be “unlike any of the previous movies”.  The movie – which hasn’t even started shooting yet – comes out Sept 2026.
  • The next sequel for the animated Spider-Man movies – “Spider Man – Beyond the Spider-Verse” movie that was originally scheduled for LAST year is now scheduled for June 2027.

OTHER NEWS:

Jennifer Salke – former head of Amazon MGM Studios – has stepped down.  Some people are saying it could be due to her almost ruining the deal for the James Bond movies.

Speaking of the James Bond movies, Amazon/MGM recently announced that Amy Pascal – who produced the live action and animated Spider Man movies at Sony, and David Heyman – producer of the Harry Potter movies at Warner Bros – will now take over as the producers for the future James Bond movies.

Landmark Theaters – who were almost sold during bankruptcy proceedings last year – is starting to come back.  They just named a new CEO and they’re planning or remodeling and/or upgrading some of their movie theaters.

LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR:

Last week they released a teaser for the cast of “Avengers: Doomsday” coming out in summer 2026.  Almost immediately after that, some fans made their own “cast chairs” thanks to photoshop.

I wonder if “Anger” (from the “Inside Out” movies – voiced by Lewis Black) will be a good guy or a bad guy in the movie.