The 2025 box office was marked by big boom periods and droughts that lasted for weeks, if not months. In a way, that’s a parallel for how the year broke down for each of Hollywood’s major studios.
No studio was exempt from releasing a big box office bust, but every studio got through the year in a different way. Some made it through via specialty and low-budget releases. Others suffered multiple bombs alongside multiple billion-dollar hits. And one pulled off a streak that has never happened before in box office history.
Let’s drill down how each studio did, what its most notable successes were, and what the outlook is heading into 2026. And like “Wicked,” we’re breaking this up into two parts, starting with a look at Warner Bros., Disney and Paramount.
Warner Bros.
Highs: “A Minecraft Movie” ($423.9M domestic/$958.1M worldwide); “Superman” ($354M dom./$616.7M WW); “Sinners” ($279.6M dom./$367.9M WW)
Lows: “Mickey 17” ($46M dom./$133M WW); “Companion” ($20.8M dom./$36.8M WW); “Alto Knights” ($10.2M WW)
Warner Bros. was not the highest grossing studio of 2025, but it was the studio that defined the box office this year. Nearly every big headline that got Hollywood talking came from the Warner lot, starting with the rumors that film division chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy were on the hot seat.
As TheWrap’s Drew Taylor noted back in March, it was ironic that two executives who assembled such an exciting film slate were considered at risk of not being able to see their projects through after films greenlit before their arrival like the mobster film “Alto Knights” and Bong Joon-ho’s “Mickey 17” faltered during an early-year theatrical slump.
Everyone in Hollywood knows what happened next: an unprecedented streak of seven straight films with $40 million-plus domestic openings, led by Legendary’s Gen Z hit “A Minecraft Movie” and also including several New Line Horror hits, a moderately successful relaunch of the DC Universe with “Superman,” and America’s highest grossing original film in 15 years, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners.” 2025 marked Warner Bros.’ best year at the box office since 2018 with more than $4 billion grossed worldwide, and it didn’t even put out a movie in the last quarter of the year.
That gap in the slate aside, this is exactly the sort of output theaters and movie lovers want from Hollywood studios: a healthy mix of franchise blockbusters with popular appeal, responsibly-budgeted horror, and several big swings on auteur-driven original stories like “Mickey 17” and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” that, thanks to “Minecraft” and “Superman,” don’t need to carry the financial load of the film division. It’s a credit to De Luca, Abdy, distribution chief Jeff Goldstein and key creative minds like New Line‘s Richard Brener and DC’s Peter Safran and James Gunn that this hot streak was possible, and Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav rewarded De Luca and Abdy with a contract extension.
And yet, if that hot streak was overshadowed early in the year by the hot seat rumors, it’s now being overshadowed in the minds of many in Hollywood by Netflix’s potential acquisition of Warner Bros. and the upheaval to the theatrical business that would come with it. Heading into a 2026 that might not bring a final resolution to the studio’s ownership, all that De Luca, Abdy and their team can do is what they did all of this year: ignore the storm and get the movies out.
And that’s what they will do with a 2026 slate that somewhat resembles 2025’s, with just as many rolls of the dice on both the franchise and original sides: DC’s “Supergirl,” New Line’s “Mortal Kombat II” and “Evil Dead Burn,” and a new animated “Cat in the Hat.” On the auteur side, there’s Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights,” Maggie Gyllenhaal’s “The Bride!,” and in what might be an Oscar contender, “Birdman” director Alejandro Inarritu’s dark comedy “Digger” starring, based on its teaser, a balding Tom Cruise.
Disney
Highs: “Zootopia 2 ($321M dom./$1.43B WW as of 12/29); “Lilo & Stitch” ($423.9M dom./$1.03B WW); “Avatar: Fire and Ash” ($227.9 dom./$805.1M WW as of 12/30)
Lows: “Snow White” ($87.2M dom./$205M WW); “Elio” ($72.9M dom./$154.2M WW); “Tron: Ares”($73.1M dom./$142.2M WW)
As we noted during what was a turbulent 2023 for Hollywood’s biggest company, Disney now has to play by the same rules as the rest of Hollywood, as flops like “The Marvels” and “Wish” proved that the brand power of the studio’s multiple production companies was no longer as infallible as it was in the late 2010s. In 2025, that was still true…sort of.
It is still true in the sense of that newfound fallibility, dropping some of the most disastrous bombs of the year. But despite that, Disney is still undeniably the cornerstone of the global box office with more than $6 billion grossed worldwide, becoming the first studio since the pandemic to pass that mark.
And what’s notable about that is Disney got there from a slate that yielded just as many enormous tentpole hits as it did bombs. Just when it seemed that “Snow White” proved to the Disney remake haters that audiences finally had enough of those movies, “Lilo & Stitch” made a cool billion dollars and proved that no, the masses just want remakes of more recent Disney films, not of the studio’s first feature from 1937. Hence, we’re getting a “Moana” remake next year just a decade removed from the original.
“Elio” became Pixar’s lowest grossing film ever after inflation adjustment, continuing the industry-wide struggles of making original animation work theatrically in today’s market. But Walt Disney Animation made up for the losses of “Elio” easily with “Zootopia 2,” which proved to be the one Hollywood franchise China loves as much as massive local tentpoles like “Detective Chinatown” as it steams towards becoming WDA’s first $1.5 billion hit before inflation.
And while “Tron: Ares” and “Ella McCay” fizzled out quickly and the Marvel Cinematic Universe released a trio of films that weren’t flops but showed a clear apathy for the franchise, “Avatar: Fire and Ash” is set to become one of the top 10 highest grossing films of all time even if it doesn’t join its predecessors in the $2 billion club.
So yes, Disney still has many issues with its IP that need fixing. But the House of Mouse is still very structurally sound, as evidenced by the fact that the studio is expected to easily hold on to its box office crown in 2026. Along with the “Moana” remake, the studio has a fifth “Toy Story” film, will finally bring “Star Wars” back to theaters with “Mandalorian & Grogu,” more attempts at original animation with Pixar’s “Hoppers” and WDA’s “Hexed,” and of course, “Avengers: Doomsday,” still the favorite to be 2026’s top grosser even if it is expected to make hundreds of millions less than “Avengers: Endgame.”
Paramount
Highs: “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” ($197.4M dom./$598.7M WW); “The Naked Gun” ($52.6M dom./$102.1M WW); “Regretting You” ($90.4M WW)
Lows: “Smurfs” ($31M dom./$124.1M WW); “The Running Man” ($68.6M WW)
When it comes to the company now known as Paramount Skydance, one must judge its 2025 film slate on a curve. It’s difficult to craft a well-marketed, widely successful hit like “Top Gun: Maverick” or even “Sonic the Hedgehog 3” when the film division’s leadership is doing a complete overhaul amidst David Ellison’s completed purchase of the studio this past summer.
As all of this was happening, Paramount’s big film was the final chapter in the “Mission: Impossible” series, “The Final Reckoning,” a film that saw its budget balloon because of filming delays during the SAG-AFTRA strike. A bump in library revenue due to fans checking out past “Mission” films on streaming and digital rental mitigated the damage, but with a global total of just under $600 million and with Tom Cruise now north of 60, it is strongly expected that Skydance will stick to this “Mission” being the final chapter as advertised.
After “Final Reckoning,” the next highest grossing film for Paramount this year was “Sonic 3,” a film that came out at the end of 2024 and made $84.5 million in domestic holdover grosses after January 1. The studio had a pair of modest mid-budget successes with “The Naked Gun” and “Regretting You,” but suffered a big budget bomb with Edgar Wright’s remake of “The Running Man,” which made less than “Regretting You” with just $68.6 million grossed worldwide.
With the Skydance merger behind it, new Paramount film chiefs Dana Goldberg and Josh Greenstein have pledged that they are committed to ramping up the studio’s theatrical output. Fans of “Avatar: The Last Airbender” called them out on this upon news that next year’s “The Legend of Aang” was being pulled from theatres to a streaming release, but studio insiders tell TheWrap that Paramount is planning to announce multiple additions to its 2026 slate in the months ahead.
So Paramount’s current list of eight films scheduled for release in the next 12 months is far from final, though it will still be a while before we get a true sense of Goldberg and Greenstein’s long-term plans as they release films greenlit by their predecessors, Daria Cercek and Mike Ireland. Among those movies are “Scary Movie 6,” Legendary’s “Street Fighter,” and new installments in the “Scream,” “Paw Patrol” and “Angry Birds” franchises. One post-merger addition is the concert film “Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft,” which the pop star is co-directing with “Avatar” creator James Cameron.
Check back for Part 2 on Wednesday.
