From a controversial recreation of a Disney cartoon to an awards-tipped sports biopic starring The Rock, why did so many high-profile Hollywood films fail at the box office this year?
There were plenty of hit films this year, but there was a raft of high-profile releases that fared far worse than expected. So where did they all go wrong? Below are 10 of the most infamous of 2025's box-office duds – and they all help to explain in different ways why Hollywood is struggling to get people out of their homes and into cinemas.
The numbers in this piece do not represent rankings, but are intended to make the separate entries as clear as possible.
Marvel Studios1. Thunderbolts*
Thunderbolts* made close to $400m (£299m) worldwide, which is not exactly small change, but it's less than half of what Avengers: Endgame made in 2019. Another of this year's Marvel offerings, Captain America: Brave New World, did slightly better, but the two films still rank way down at number 29 and 30 in the studio's rankings. It seems unfair to lump them together, as Thunderbolts* was an exciting romp, while Brave New World was a shambles. But both films were victims of the same issue: they felt like leftovers, reheated scraps of a Marvel Cinematic Universe saga that concluded years ago. Another Marvel release, Fantastic Four: First Steps, was a bigger hit, which suggests that if the studio starts afresh with its most iconic characters, then it could recover. But it's notable that there was only one superhero film in the international top 10 this year, and that was Warner/ DC's Superman. Has superhero fatigue arrived at last?
Disney2. Snow White
Lilo & Stitch was a billion-dollar smash this year, and How to Train Your Dragon wasn't far behind, so audiences are obviously happy to show up for live-action/ CGI remakes of cartoons they've already seen. The exception that proved the rule was Disney's Snow White, which didn't make back its budget. The film was undeniably flawed: it kept pulling in two different directions, so that half of it was a reverential recreation of the original 1937 cartoon, and half of it was a subversive spin on the same source material. But a bigger problem was that Snow White was mired in controversy for months before it was released. Some people objected to the casting of Rachel Zegler; others objected to cast members' political views. As the BBC's Caryn James put it, Snow White became "the victim of its moment, a fairy-tale princess covered in mud". It would have taken a truly magical film to overcome all the bad publicity. And this, as it turned out, wasn't a truly magical film.
Warner Bros Entertainment Inc3. Mickey 17
Bong Joon Ho's Parasite was a phenomenon – a universally acclaimed South Korean thriller that, in 2020, became the first film not in the English language to win the Oscar for best picture. Cinephiles everywhere waited with bated breath for Bong's follow-up. And waited. And waited. Finally, after its release date had been pushed back and back, Mickey 17 came out this February. But by then people had stopped talking about Parasite, and started talking about why the new film had taken so long. Was there something wrong with Mickey 17? The BBC's Hugh Montgomery certainly thought so. In his two-star review he called Mickey 17 "a serious disappointment", "completely toothless", and "a film with a major identity crisis". Audiences agreed. After the triumph of Parasite, it made perfect sense for Warner Bros to give Bong more than $100m (£75m) to make a science-fiction epic, but even with Batman (Robert Pattinson) in the lead role – or roles – Mickey 17 wasn't what the studio had hoped for.
Yannis Drakoulidi/ Amazon MGM Studios
4. After the Hunt
After the Hunt stars the queen of Hollywood, Julia Roberts, and it's directed by Luca Guadagnino, the maker of the awards-tastic Call My by Your Name. This contentious MeToo drama could have been a hit, then, but it's reported to have made less than $10m (£7.5m) globally – half of Roberts's salary, apparently, and around one-eighth of the overall budget. Maybe that's simply because Guadagnino's rambling film wasn't good enough, but it could be that it wasn't good enough in certain specific ways. It's got some hefty talking points, it's got a well-dressed, big-name cast, it's got a classy, rarefied setting – Yale University's Philosophy faculty – and it's got a mystery: what went on between Andrew Garfield's academic and Ayo Edebiri's student? It's also got too many subplots, too much silliness, and a running time that is far too long. Does that ring any bells? Yes, After the Hunt resembles the expensive television series that are currently unavoidable on every single streaming service – so why should anyone pay to see it at the cinema?
Black Bear Pictures5. Christy
Christy, Americana and Eden have two things in common. The first is that they all feature Sydney Sweeney in a major role. The other is that they all flopped. Christy, a biopic of the boxer Christy Martin, is especially notorious, having had one of the worst opening weekends ever in the US of any film with a wide cinema release. What makes this so remarkable is that Sweeney is currently one of the world's most popular celebrities, so the lesson could be that fame on social media isn't the same as film stardom. Another factor is that controversy over Sweeney's appearance in an American Eagle advertisement may have put off some potential cinemagoers. But what can get lost in the discourse is that she keeps making worthwhile independent films that don't exploit her pin-up looks. Anyone But You may have been sold on the sight of her and Glen Powell in their swimming costumes, but Immaculate (2024) and Reality (2023) were unglamorous, risk-taking projects, and this year's flops were hardly mainstream Hollywood blockbusters. "We don’t always just make art for numbers, we make it for impact," said Sweeney on Instagram when Christy hit the canvas. She may have had a point.
Brook Rushton6. I Know What You Did Last Summer
Did studio executives know what they were doing when they greenlit I Know What You Did Last Summer? Well… sort of. There have been two lucrative revivals of 1990s/ 2000s teen horror franchises recently, Scream and Final Destination. And one of those franchises, Scream, started with a screenplay written by Kevin Williamson. So what could be more profitable than reviving another spooky 1990s franchise which also began with a Williamson script? That was the theory, anyway. In fact, the legacy sequel's takings were relatively paltry, raising a fundamental question: just how well-loved was the 1997 film in the first place? Not as well-loved as Scream and Final Destination, that's for sure. Scream fans have never stopped buying Ghostface masks, and the chain-reaction deaths in Final Destination are ideal social-media fodder. But do people still talk about I Know What You Did Last Summer? Do people dress up as (checks notes) The Fisherman every year? A more appropriate title might have been I Can't Really Remember What You Did Last Summer.
7. Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere
Springsteen: Deliver Me from Nowhere could have been this year's answer to A Complete Unknown – a drama about a revered American singer-songwriter that focused on one key point in his career. Jeremy Allen White from The Bear put in the effort to sing and play like Bruce Springsteen, and the writer-director, Scott Cooper, had already made an Oscar-nominated film about an American singer-songwriter – albeit a fictional one – Crazy Heart (2009). Despite all that, audiences didn't fancy watching a rock star moping around New Jersey, having a minor romance, and recording an album of quiet acoustic tracks in his bedroom. What they wanted was the surging energy and urgent storytelling that enliven so many of Springsteen's stadium anthems. Deliver Me from Nowhere went nowhere. As refreshing as it may be when a biopic decides to home in on a small segment of its subject's life, sometimes the whole "rags to riches / burn out / redemption" arc is what's required.
Pixar8. Elio
Pixar's Inside Out 2 was the biggest film in the world in 2024, so hopes were high for the studio's next cartoon. Those hopes crashed down to earth when Elio was released in June. It wasn't that the film was terrible, but it was fatally compromised. A science-fiction coming-of-age adventure, it was conceived as a personal story by Adrian Molina, the co-director of Coco, who was inspired by his own lonely childhood on a military base. But then, in 2024, Molina left the project, along with other key personnel, to be replaced by two different directors. The result was a cartoon that no longer had a compelling reason to exist; as with two other recent Disney flops, Strange World (2022) and Wish (2023), it was tricky to summarise the plot or to explain what was at stake. The film might have been better, it seems, if Molina had just been left to get on with it. Ultimately, the Disney alien that made a fortune this year was Stitch from Lilo & Stitch rather than any of the bug-eyed extra-terrestrials in Elio.
Universal Studios9. M3GAN 2.0
Why did M3GAN 2.0 malfunction? When M3GAN came out three years ago, it was a meme-spawning hit: the homicidal robot, with its long hair and cutesy dress, was clearly designed to become a Halloween costume, and a clip of the sinister Model 3 Generative Android's dance routine went viral. All the director Gerard Johnstone had to do was deliver more of the same and he could have watched the money roll in. The glitch was that he decided not to deliver more of the same. While both films could be described as tongue-in-cheek science-fiction satires, M3GAN was a suburban slasher chiller, and the sequel was a sprawling, geopolitical action thriller. On its own terms, M3GAN 2.0 was terrific fun – but sometimes you have to give the people what they want. "We all thought M3GAN was like Superman. We could do anything to her," the film's producer, Jason Blum, said on The Town podcast. "We could change genres. We could put her in the summer. We could make her look different. We could turn her from a bad guy into a good guy. And we classically over-thought how powerful people's engagement really was with her."
A2410. The Smashing Machine
Dwayne Johnson has been one of the world's biggest film stars for over a decade, literally and figuratively, but there comes a time when every commercial colossus wants to prove that he or she can cut it as a serious dramatic actor, too. And so it was that The Rock made his bid for an Oscar – or at least an Oscar nomination – by starring in The Smashing Machine. All the signs were promising, in that Johnson had a prestigious co-star (Emily Blunt), a feted director (Benny Safdie, who made Good Time and Uncut Gems with his brother Josh), and a true story about a mixed martial artist battling with addictions. The trouble was that Johnson wasn't flexing many acting muscles that he hadn't flexed before: he was a charismatic wrestler playing a charismatic wrestler. The only major difference from his previous work was that The Smashing Machine was depressing – and no one goes to see a film starring The Rock because they want to be depressed. Still, you can't help feeling sorry for the director. His brother made another sports biopic, Marty Supreme, starring Timothée Chalamet – and it's getting all the plaudits that didn't go to The Smashing Machine.
BBC