Summer flicks fall flat again at the box office

Recent revenue reached $3.67 billion, just below the $3.68 billion tallied in 2024.

- BY SAMANTHA MASUNAGA

Warner Bros. Pictures JULIA GARNER in "Weapons," a Warner Bros. Pictures film that grossed over $120 million domestically.

Stitch, Superman and a flock of creepy children drew audiences to movie theaters this summer, but it wasn’t enough to jolt box office revenue past even the dreary levels reached last year.

The total theatrical haul for the summer — which, for industry watchers, stretches from the first weekend of May through Labor Day — grossed $3.67 billion in the U.S. and Canada, down slightly from $3.68 billion in 2024, according to Comscore.

The numbers are even more sobering compared with 2023's Barbenheimer-fueled summer sum of $4 billion, a target the industry used to hit routinely.

Though the season started with high hopes after spring hits including “Sinners” and “A Minecraft Movie,” and particularly since there were several big franchise blockbusters on the lineup, the softer summer shows cracks in the movie business that have been growing for years.

Theaters have been grappling with declining attendance since before the pandemic, though the COVID-19-related shutdowns exacerbated that trend. Not only did audiences get used to streaming movies from home, but certain mid-tier films, such as comedies, increasingly migrated over to those platforms, making them rarer sights at the box office. Studios continue to suffer from an overreliance on franchises that are losing steam.

A series of massive hits can change the mood, but those were lacking this summer. For starters, no single film emerged as an unstoppable hit on the level of last year’s Walt Disney Co. and Pixar animated sequel "Inside Out 2" and Marvel Studios' "Deadpool & Wolverine," which each hauled in more than $600 million domestically (and had global grosses exceeding $1 billion).