5 biggest takeaways from the summer movie season

1. The MCU isn't dead, but it no longer drives the cinematic zeitgeist

Or, in short: oof, the 'Fantastic Four' movie is disaster-adjacent. 'First Steps' will likely turn a profit and even outperformed 'Captain America: Harrison Ford is Hulk, But Red' and 'Thunderbolts.' But that’s the problem. Those two films got fans worrying, and 'Fantastic Four' did little to calm them. It should just edge past $500 million, but this used to be a franchise that could hit $1 billion. Meanwhile, 'Superman' has topped $600 million, giving James Gunn and company the top superhero film of 2025. Marvel movies at this point are basically niche films with a sizable niche audience.

2. Brad Pitt is a proper movie star, Tom Cruise...maybe not

Apple has no track record at the box office, and while Formula 1 is huge worldwide, it isn’t massive in the U.S. 'F1' was banking on Brad Pitt - and it paid off. The film is now the most successful sports movie ever and is set to clear $600 million. Calling it an underdog story feels weird, but in a warped, billion-dollar-companies-battling kind of way, it fits.

Meanwhile, 'Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning' fell just short of $600 million. Paramount could pull some theatrical tricks to push it over, but it essentially came up short compared with 'F1.' So why say Pitt can sell tickets and Cruise can’t? 'The Final Reckoning' is the eighth film in a franchise leaning hard on the “one last ride” angle. 'F1' exceeded expectations. 'The Final Reckoning' didn’t.

3. Stay in your lane, aka the "M3GAN 2.0" story

We’re not exaggerating as producer Jason Blum has admitted they bungled the process on the 'M3GAN' sequel. The original was a low-budget, January horror hit that crushed weak competition and captured the zeitgeist. For the follow-up, they barely increased the budget, dropped 'M3GAN 2.0' into the summer, and leaned into action. As Blum put it, “we classically over-thought how powerful people's engagement was with her.”

Sometimes it’s better to be the big fish in a small pond. Not every franchise, or every character, is built to fight for eyeballs in the summer.

4. People love Stitch, and live-action remakes of animated movies aren't dying anytime soon

One movie this year has cleared $1 billion worldwide: 'Lilo & Stitch.' Disney took its 2002 animated success and gave it the live-action treatment, proving that Stitch still moves tickets. The remake crushed after Disney’s recent live-action efforts had been treading water. Now, a sequel is on the way, and Disney can also, rightly or wrongly, use the Stitch model to justify future live-action remakes.

Universal got in on the trend with a live-action 'How to Train Your Dragon,' an almost shot-for-shot redo of the original. It made $250 million domestically and over $600 million worldwide, all without really capturing the zeitgeist.

If a note-for-note remake can hit $600 million, why would studios hesitate to keep greenlighting them? The math is simple: the audience is there, and so is the money.

5. Make more comedy movies

Maybe Hollywood can’t quite sell original comedies yet, but out-and-out laughs aren’t dead. The 'Naked Gun' reboot proved it can still be done while being funny, well-reviewed, and likely to double its budget while thriving as streaming rewatch fodder. 'Freakier Friday,' a legacy sequel, is poised to clear $100 million and do well on Disney+. 'Happy Gilmore 2' skipped theaters but became one of Netflix’s biggest hits ever.

Spend a little to get people into theaters to actually laugh. What else are you going to do? Pour money into 'Smurfs' or a tired legacy sequel like 'I Know What You Did Last Summer'? That’s not the kind of laughter anyone wants.