Movies & Money (5/22/25)
(And will any film hit $400 million this summer?)
Since 2013 I have been working with Angela Miles on her business-themed television shows. That is when I took over the Movies & Money segment, originally at WCIU in Chicago and since transitioned into the show Business First AM where I offer thoughts and, most importantly, facts about the box office along with historical context for the numbers. We have played with the segment over the years with it recently settling into a recap of the previous week, a look ahead to the next and a third part with recommendations for the viewers. The segment airs every Thursday morning in the various markets listed here.
This week’s spot has me breaking down the recent numbers on Final Destination: Bloodlines, Thunderbolts* and Sinners. Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning is my clear recommendation for the week, a film that is going to come in second place to the latest live-action Disney remake, Lilo & Stitch. And yes, I was a little nasal.
Every week at Rotten Tomatoes I break down the numbers even further. For the first time in a long while I did not work on full summer guestimates. Normally I have posted a piece or just do a list on social media or even partake in a private contest. None of that happened this year. Though when I was recently pressed on my thoughts on the summer box office, without doing a full-on scalpel precision look I was stuck with the thought that it was possible this season would be without a $400 million grosser, something that hadn’t happened (pandemic years of 2020 & 2021 aside) since 2014.
Why did I think that? Well, just a cursory glance at the schedule I believed that #1 would be some kind of battle between Jurassic World: Rebirth and Superman, with an edge towards the latter. The last Jurassic film reunited the original cast and only got to $376 million. Maybe if it was better it would have pushed over, but it wasn’t and it didn’t. Then how many times have they screwed up Superman since 1981? Bryan Singer’s Superman Returns was a low point of the post-Reeve (not Reeves) universe in 2006. Scream all you want about Snyder and Cavill, but three films and a director’s cut did nothing to convince anyone other than the most blindly dedicated DCU cheerleader that Superman had been done justice.
There has been hope ever since James Gunn was tasked with retooling it and what better opportunity as Marvel has floundered to a lot of DCU-level material since Endgame. I certainly want to be hopeful. I’ve liked but not loved a portion of Gunn’s work. (I still think his Peacemaker series is the best thing he has crafted to date.) Is his Superman going to be the true return and inspire all of Kal-El’s fans to come out and take a chance again after so many duds? We’re only eight years away from Justice League (even less with the Snyder cut.) When Warner Bros. rebooted The Batman with Robert Pattinson it was a full decade from the final Nolan. And even that didn’t hit $400 million after two Batman films that did and then some.
Call it just a hunch. And it could be dead wrong. But this is basically just a long-winded approach to get back to Lilo & Stitch – which – with a huge Memorial Day weekend could easily be headed to be one of the few $300 million grossers this summer. It’s already tracking to do better than that live-action Little Mermaid debacle (which finished with $298 million.) But if it overperforms, which is very possible, maybe it will be that film that challenges the $400 million assertion. Make no mistake, this is not Snow White, and Stitch probably has that beat by Sunday. But we would probably need to see a number of like $175 million by Monday for it to reach that high. Again, back to the facts, the only Memorial Day opener to gross $400 million and beyond was Top Gun: Maverick. Only Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End and Guy Ritchie’s live action version of Disney’s Aladdin, made it to $300 million. Lilo & Stitch will be in the Memorial Day top five. But more of you should get out to Mission: Impossible and give that franchise a chance to break its glass ceiling of $220 million set by the (admittedly best) sixth entry, Fallout.