Going to the movies in 2025 will look very familiar. The studio slates for the summer movie season through the holidays are heavy with sequels, franchise reboots and other repurposed intellectual property.
In early 2025, when the website IMDB released its list of the most anticipated movies of the year, the names all had a familiar ring to them. Of the 10 movies – ranked based on the number of visits to their pages online – two are live-action remakes of animated hits, three are sequels and four are reboots or spinoffs of superhero franchises. The single one-off, “A Minecraft Movie,” is an adaptation of a popular video game.
As the film industry prepares for the Cannes Film festival, studio executives are looking ahead to a year with fewer challenges – without the overhang of writers and actors strikes that hobbled 2024 – but are leaning on popular franchises as they face the headwinds of a slowing economy and volatile social landscape.
“We’re resetting to the normal pipeline we had pre-pandemic,” said John Partilla, CEO of ScreenVision. The cadence and quantity of movies released across many genres is back to the norm, he said. The movie slate in the first half of 2024 was slightly “anemic” because of the aftereffects of the strikes that ended in December 2023, but release volume is back to 100-110 movies released in 2,000 or more screens nationwide that was annual standard before the COVID-19 lockdown shut down theaters in 2020.
Gunnar Wiedenfels, Chief Financial Officer of Warner Bros. Discovery, told financial analysts that studios expect to do “significantly better” this year, now the aftereffects of the strikes have cleared up. “We know that 2025 and all of the years in the near future are going to have much, much better profiles,” he said.
“This is a great year for us already,” said Partilla. He noted the opening of “Minecraft” in April raked in numbers similar to the opening weeks that made “Barbie” a summer blockbuster in 2023.
Studios are leaning into the existing fandom and amplifying their messages by giving audiences familiar with the content more content to share online. “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” doesn’t open until July, but the drumbeat for that movie started making news when the trailers dropped on social platforms in early April.
“It does seem that the bar is somewhat raised for studios to persuade consumers to leave their couches,” said Partilla, but added that studios and marketers are meeting that challenge by using media to reach consumers in new ways, such as sharing TikTok videos, while still relying on the “tried and true” tactics such as in-theater trailers and out of home advertising.
Moviemakers are finding inventive ways to build cultural movements around their films to bring the public in, as witnessed in 2024 with the success of “Wicked.” Trailers are now showing up online earlier than they used to and the film stars are also using their own social platforms to promote their movies to fans, Partilla noted.
“It’s become very fan-participatory,” he said.
Embracing fandoms
Leveraging existing intellectual property assets is a big part of the major film studios’ strategies in what they concede is a difficult financial landscape. In a call with financial analysts earlier this year, Disney CEO Robert Iger teased the studio has “a lot more to come with an exciting slate of theatrical releases tied to some of our most popular IP.”
Disney, which has partnerships with Marvel and owns the Star Wars franchise, is scheduled to release a number of extensions and reboots of popular superhero franchises in 2025, including “Captain America: Brave New World,” “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” and the Avengers franchise extension “Thunderbolts.” It also has releases planned for the sequels “Toy Story 5,” “Tron: Ares,” “Zootopia 2” and “Freakier Friday.”
During a recent meeting with analysts, Brian Robbins, President and CEO of Paramount Pictures noted the studio’s managers “continue to focus on franchise growth and management capitalizing on Paramount’s rich library and IP.” He said leadership is “excited for a dynamic and robust ’25 slate” and singled out “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning;” “The Running Man,” starring Glen Powell; new animated films featuring the Smurfs and SpongeBob SquarePants and an original live-action comedy teaming up the creators of “South Park” and rapper Kendrick Lamar.
“Our approach to franchise management is a long-term view, cultivating active fan bases and building audiences over time, and one that continues to pay dividends,” he said.
“I think it’s an ecosystem feeding upon its whole self,” said Brian Roberts, CEO of Comcast, parent of Universal Studios, DreamWorks and the indie studio Focus Features. The company, also parent to the Universal Studios Theme parks, has leveraged its IP across units including parks, NBC TV networks and Peacock streaming service.
Universal Studios has a number of sequels also teed up for 2025, including “M3gan 2.0,” “Black Phone 2,” Five Nights at Freddy’s 2,” “Jurassic World: Rebirth,” and of course, “Wicked: For Good,” the second half of the blockbuster musical. DreamWorks is releasing the animated feature “The Bad Guys 2” while Focus Features will release “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale,” the third film adaptation of the popular TV show.
Not all the anticipated movies are repurposed IP, said Partilla. He noted the thriller “Black Bag” had a strong opening in April and singled out “The Housemaid,” a thriller by director Paul Feig starring Sydney Sweeney; and “F1,” a Formula 1 racing drama starring Brad Pitt, as two releases highly anticipated among exhibitors.
“I’m happy with any content that excites audiences,” he said.
