Box Office Debate: Is Melania a Success?

It is not often that the two passions of this blog (politics & movies) overlap in a very real way, so I don't want to let this past weekend's premiere of the movie Melania pass without mention.  For the curious, on principal I have refused to see the movie, as I don't want to give the Trump family more of my money than I have to (I'm already inevitably doing that with these lawsuits the president is granting himself through the Department of Justice with our tax dollars).  But I am curious about the rather odd debate over the film itself, and its success.  While I always assumed that the Trump family would claim the movie was a big hit (as is their wont), the mainstream media (or what's left of it) hasn't been able to settle on a question of whether it exceeded expectations or counts as a box office hit, and as that is a pet hobby of mine, I thought we'd tackle it here.

First off, a couple of things to note.  Primarily, this is not the first time that an incumbent First Lady has dabbled in the mainstream world of entertainment.  While the First Lady has become a pop culture mainstay through her sheer existence (following the First Lady's fashion and details about her life are extremely common, and have been for well over a century), pop culture has been a big part of their planned lives as well.  Frances Cleveland was so popular advertisers used to put her face on everything from soap to tobacco to liver pills, and Jackie Kennedy's Tour of the White House won her an Emmy Award.  Nancy Reagan & Michelle Obama made guest appearances on television programs while they were in office, and Hillary Clinton won a Grammy Award.  In fact, by most measures Melania Trump has largely avoided (or been unable to break through) with her being the only First Lady since Bess Truman not to be photographed by Vogue magazine in some capacity (some, like Jill Biden, Michelle Obama, & Hillary Clinton, were on the cover something Melania only was before her husband entered politics), and she's also the only First Lady since Sesame Street began to not have publicly met a Muppet (one of my favorite bits of political trivia).  This documentary in many ways feels overdue, not in terms of me wanting it, but in terms of my surprise it hadn't happened yet.

But in terms of its success, I think we need to think of it by two definitions: did it beat expectations, and did it make a profit, because for a film like Melania, these are two very different answers.  Over the opening weekend the film made a worldwide total of $7.1 million.  By way of a documentary, that's really good.  Not counting things like concert films (where figures like Taylor Swift, Michael Jackson, and One Direction have had indisputable success at the box office), this is the biggest opening-weekend box office for a documentary since 2012, when DisneyNature's Chimpanzee came out (only because I'll never get this chance again to plug this on this blog, I have seen every single one of the DisneyNature films, and Chimpanzee is one of the better ones-my ranking is here).  That's impressive, I have to admit.  I don't know that I doubted it'd hit that number (more on that in a second), but it's on-its-surface a laudable achievement, particularly in an era where documentaries can't even get theatrical runs.  Also, given its universally bad reviews, it's hard not to be impressed that word-of-mouth didn't kill it.

It's also worth noting that this opens up a conversation about an untapped movie theater market: conservative filmgoers.  The biopic Reagan made $30 million last year (starring Dennis Quaid, it also hit those numbers while being crucified by critics), the Matt Walsh documentary Am I Racist? made $12 million (and turned a decent profit), and conspiracy theorist Dinesh D'Souza's Obama's America cleared $33 million (and made a large profit).  And then there's Sound of Freedom, a narrative film that had connections to the QAnon conspiracy theory that made a fortune at the box office, over $250 million, which honestly has allowed for production company Angel Studios to have created a cottage industry of MAGA-friendly dramas.  All of this is happening in markets like West Palm Beach, Dallas, and Miami that don't usually clock as some of the most profitable in the country for mainstream features (that favor places like Los Angeles, Boston, & New York).  If I was a studio executive, there would be lessons here I'd be taking in terms of finding a new crowd in an industry desperate to find levers to increase theater attendance.

But while you could argue straight-faced that it exceeded expectations, it is decidedly not a "hit" movie.  The film appears to have cost $40 million, and reportedly Ms. Trump herself will pocket $28 million of that in appearance fees from Amazon.  The rule of thumb for a movie is that it needs to make double the cost in order to make a profit (to account for marketing expenses), which would mean that for Amazon to see a return on its investment, the film would need to gross $80 million.  Not counting concert films and documentaries largely made to attract large format iMax audiences (i.e. the kinds of films that run in museums for decades), only four documentaries have made that much money: three animal-themed documentaries (March of the Penguins and two DisneyNature films-Oceans and Earth), and the political documentary Fahrenheit 9/11 from Michael Moore, which stands apart as a sort of elusive, untouchable film in terms of box office in the way Gone with the Wind does (i.e. no one is ever beating that).  Melania will not come close to those movies in terms of their gross...

...and I suspect everyone involved knew that.  Brett Ratner appears to have signed on to direct the film solely because Trump then called Paramount to pressure them, despite Ratner's sexual assault charges, to greenlight Rush Hour 4, the follow-up to the massively successful film franchise (and probably the only way Ratner was ever going to get a movie of that type of budget, and with that kind of back-end potential, again).  Jeff Bezos funded the entire operation, including signing that $28 million check to Melania Trump...and then got a $581 million contract with the Air Force just a few days before the film's release.  It's hard not to see all of this as a pretty obvious money-laundering front for Trump to take private equity cash that both parties know will not end up making anyone a profit, and in turn giving out tax payer dollars without any personal harm (i.e. a multi-million dollar bribe) and giving the First Lady the sort of glamorous vanity project that mainstream media organizations like Vogue or broadcast television have pointedly refuse to provide.  Melania is, therefore, a film that, taken on its surface, is impressive in terms of its audience (and savvy movie executives might be able to see this and, with a slimmer budget, try and recreate the same formula to make a real profit-you could easily see, say, an Erika Kirk documentary about her life after Charlie Kirk's death doing similar numbers), but it's also not a successful film by any measure of it actually making money in the traditional sense...and is so obviously a con job that it's hard to take any conversation of it super seriously as the president openly trades in tax payer dollars to fill his (and his wife's) wallet.

What Will be the Next Billion Dollar Movie?

Earlier today, we did one of our annual start-of-the-year traditions, so now it's time to do a second: predicting the upcoming year's $1 billion movies.  With the quarantine exception year of 2020, every year since 2008 has had at least one movie that, at the global box office, made over $1 billion, an astronomical marker that guarantees a profit, and a stamp of approval from audiences.  In 2025, we had four movies that hit this marker: Zootopia 2, Avatar: Fire and Ash, Lilo & Stitch, and Ne Zha 2, the latter becoming the first film to make $1 billion that is not primarily in English, and it also was the highest-grossing film overall this year (technically Avatar 3 and Zootopia 2 are still shooting up the charts, but I can't see them beating Ne Zha 2).  No other film at the current box office will get close to hitting $1 billion (only one more movie, A Minecraft Movie, cracked $900 million), so I think we officially have four in 2025.

Each year I predict the five films most likely to cross this threshold (more on that in a second), and I did okay.  Zootopia and Avatar were both movies that I predicted, and I did mention Lilo, though I didn't quite catch Millennial nostalgia for the movie after Mufasa struggled at the box office (and the Disney live-action trend continues to wane).  Ne Zha 2 I will totally own I hadn't even heard of when it came out of nowhere, and so I don't really fault myself on that (you'll note I don't predict a Chinese film to be in contention below, but I suspect one will...it's just really hard to find a lot of hints at which franchises even have new movies, much less which might be in the realm, so just know that I'm confident another film will come close or exceed in 2025...I just can't tell which).  Of the three that I predicted, one was Jurassic World: Rebirth, which crossed the $800 million line so a solid bet, though nowhere near as strong as the films starring Chris Pratt in this franchise.  The other two were missteps.  I thought Tom Cruise nostalgia and the proper close to a series with Mission Impossible 8 was enough to get it going (perhaps if the movie had been good it would have helped?), but it didn't even turn a profit, and making even less was The Fantastic Four: The First Steps, which was one of several misfires from the MCU this year.  These were respectable guesses, but it also shows that audiences have become exhausted by these franchises.

Which brings us to our list, and some good news.  I think, for the first time since 2019, the box office has the potential for more than five $1 billion-dollar movies.  In fact, if it doesn't, we're looking at at least one major franchise headed to catastrophe.  Similar to previous years, I'm only going to predict five, but I will say that a year from now I deserve some shame if there's more than 5 billion-dollar movies, and I left one on the chair.  I think that we'll have a lot of headline winners (though I continue to worry about mid-tier movies that aren't horror breaking out...really excited to see stuff like The Housemaid & Anaconda get love, and am sending into the world that I want more of films that can have box office legs hitting the $100M mark again that don't have $100M budgets...films like The Devil Wears Prada 2, Verity, & Focker-in-Law, I know you're there, and would love for you to show up well too).

With that-here's my guesses (listed chronologically):

Honorable Mentions: As ever, I'll name check a few films below that might be options or dark horses, especially if the big $1 billion prediction clicks, but there are three movies that I feel deserve special treatment here because not only are they $1 billion contenders, they are ones I think probably are hitting $1 billion (or darn close).  The first is the most obvious: The Mandalorian and Grogu, the first Star Wars film in seven years, and part of a major TV franchise.  I'm not picking it because it feels like Star Wars light without being connected to the main Skywalker series, but nostalgia for it could be real, and I think waiting so long might have people turning out if it's good (for the record-I'll be there opening weekend, I'm pumped, and making me wait 7 years has actually primed me to see this).  Second, we have Minions 3, which is the seventh film from this franchise, and 5/6 of these movies have made over $900 million.  The reason I'm not listing it is because the last two were JUST shy, and I do wonder how much longer this franchise can milk this for what it's worth (but I could be wrong...I also predicted the last two & got screwed over so I'm trying a different tact).  And third, we have Moana, a movie I'm an idiot for not listing (and initially I did, but changed it last second), as the franchise is beloved, but am I the only person thinking this is "too soon" after a forgettable sequel?  I'm judging this in part by sitting next to a 9-year-old the first time I saw the trailer and she said "that's not Moana" when she came onscreen, and I think it's a bad sign they're hiding Dwayne Johnson from us...is this Lilo where it'll be crap and still make $1 billion, or was Lilo an aberration in a tired format?

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie

Release Date: April 3, 2026

Reasons Why It Will Hit $1 Billion: I mean, the biggest one?  The last movie did.  Not only did it hit it, it made $1.3 billion and was a gigantic hit that honestly I don't think a lot of people saw coming.  The recent trend toward established video game & toy IP (not just this, but also Barbie and Minecraft) being more reliable at the box office than superheroes has opened up a lot of gates, and this will be the biggest test if it's just a novelty or if it also is creating franchises.  The marketing so far has been smart, hinting at new characters like Rosalina and Bowser Jr, and this is based off of an equally popular game.  I suspect this will be a sugar rush opening weekend, and then it'll be a question of how well it can do internationally (and if it it's any good).

Reasons Why It Won't Hit $1 Billion: Some of the problems with surprise $1 billion movies is that they tend to struggle to duplicate with sequels because people only wanted them once.  Some good recent examples include Joker, Alice in Wonderland, and Captain Marvel, all of which had insane first numbers and then turned into nothing when people were like "I'm good-that was all I needed" on a second shot.  I do worry that's the case for Mario, who started a trend but hasn't had the same staying power that, say, a Barbie sequel might invite.

What It Means for the Rest of the Year: There's not a lot of established video game or toy IP this year that you might borrow from (2027's Zelda is a much better test), but you should be looking out for Masters of the Universe, which is reviving the He-Man franchise and is a big bet for the summer, and Resident Evil is getting a showy punch-up after the failure of 2021's Welcome to Raccoon City.  The biggest contender for it might be Jumanji 3, which might get bumped (details on it so far are slim, which makes me wonder how far along they are in production), but the last two films were gigantic, $800+ million movies (the first one was just shy of $1 billion), and is opening at Christmas which could be a good way to cash in (similar to 2025, studios are betting big on the holiday box office in 2026).

Toy Story 5

Release Date: 6/19/26

Reasons Why It Will Hit $1 Billion: Well, depending on how you count it, the last two both got $1 billion.  Past performance is one thing, but these movies are beloved.  Go to DisneyWorld and you'll see entire sections of the park dedicated to Woody & Buzz (Donald Duck can't even boast that, and he's been a staple for decades).  Pixar also seems intent on this being a big deal-sequels are a huge part of their game plan (Incredibles 3 and Coco 2 are both greenlit, and you gotta assume Inside Out 3 is just a matter of time away), so they are going to want their crown jewel to look shiny...

Reasons Why It Won't Hit $1 Billion: ...particularly since the last time Buzz was on the big-screen, it was an embarrassing catastrophe.  2022's Lightyear was critically-hazed, a financial flop, and became the first film in the franchise not to get an Oscar nomination of some sort.  Part of why I think they're bringing this movie back (other than greed) is to make up for tarnishing the legacy so much, though I am worried that this is another risk for Disney-Toy Story 4 was able to get past some of the "we don't need this" by holding up and feeling like a really beautiful sendoff to Woody...but how will they retcon that ending AND get the sort of sentimentality that has become a hallmark of this franchise without increasingly jaded audiences turning away from them?  Buzz's Tim Allen is back, but it's worth noting that Slinky Dog, Sarge the Army Man, and both the Potato Heads are all dead in real life...will audiences forgive that Pixar keeps reminding them that this isn't the movie they fell in love with?

What It Means for the Rest of the Year: You're going to note a shocking amount of Disney on this list (seriously-the Mouse House is owning the 2026 box office), but if you can believe it there's two other original films (Hexed and Hoppers) coming out next year from them as well.  It's hard not to wonder if the continued trend of Disney originals getting hung-out-to-dry (save for Elemental) will continue, or if we'll finally have the relief of discovering the next Disney franchise.  I would also mention that The Cat in the Hat is (other than Minions 3 of course) one of the few non-Disney animated films in 2026 to keep an eye on, particularly as 2018's The Grinch outperformed virtually all expectations (it made way more than you remember it did for a film that no one remembers).

The Odyssey

Release Date: 7/17/26

Reasons Why It Will Hit $1 Billion: My riskiest bet, particularly given I had the respectable net of Star Wars or Moana to rely upon, but this is for fun so why not get a little gutsy?  Christopher Nolan's last film, a biopic about the man who created the nuclear bomb, nearly made $1 billion, and this is WAY more in-line with what we've come to expect for a $1 billion movie (a starry action-adventure).  Nolan's film is huge-people are literally already buying tickets, and given the stature he has, if it's good it'll have the kind of word-of-mouth you can usually only get if you're James Cameron, enough to make $1 billion.  I'm pumped-I think this is going to be a big deal.

Reasons Why It Won't Hit $1 Billion: I mean, for starters, it's not based on established cinematic or video game IP...it's a thousands year old story about Greece.  But I think the bigger question is more if it will have international appeal.  Oppenheimer had a 66% share of its gross internationally (a respectable anomaly given the subject matter).  Given the potential for this domestically, if The Odyssey can pull that off, I think it will make it to $1 billion...but I could also see this being more of a domestic box office thing given it doesn't come with recognizable characters like most $1 billion movies do.

What It Means for the Rest of the Year: There's a lot of movies that are going for less conventional routes (i.e. not comic books & animation) this year.  You've got original SciFi epics like Project Hail Mary and Disclosure Day (both of which looks terrific), as well as the long-awaited Michael Jackson biopic Michael and the close to the Dune franchise (Dune: Part Three), as the last one made almost double its predecessor, and interest in the series continues to grow.  Also, we can't mention Oppenheimer without also mentioning Barbie, and like Christopher Nolan, Barbie director Greta Gerwig also has a follow-up this year in Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, which I'd have a lot more hope for it being a box office juggernaut (and $1 billion contender) IF the film was getting a proper theatrical release rather than just a 28-day trial before it's slapped onto Netflix.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day

Release Date: 7/31/26

Reasons Why It Will Hit $1 Billion: July promises to be a BIG month for Tom Holland given he's leading both of these films (will this be the closest together ever that someone made two $1 billion movies?), and we also have here (in my opinion) the surest $1 billion movie of the list.  Holland's last two endeavors as Spider-Man both made over $1 billion, and even as an insanely saturated character (he has his own accompanying animated franchise as well), there seems to be no stopping him.  Spider-Man is, over even Batman or Superman, the most consistently bankable superhero in movies today, and given that Holland is almost certainly closing out his time behind the mask after this (he'll be in his thirties by the time this is released), people will want to see how this ends.

Reasons Why It Won't Hit $1 Billion: I say this with all love and sincerity, if this movie doesn't hit $1 billion, the entire comic book genre has been torn to shreds in a way that it's basically impossible to imagine.  Even people who don't see comic book movies see the Spider-Man movies.

What It Means for the Rest of the Year: Probably nothing.  I will note that (in addition to the next film on this list) there are two superhero movies (here from DC) coming out this year (Supergirl and Clayface), and while neither should come close to $1 billion (if Superman couldn't, why would these?), both are worth keeping an eye on just to understand the health of the superhero genre after 2025 yielded no billion-dollar movies for either DC or Marvel despite quite a bit of trying.

Avengers: Doomsday

Release Date: 12/18/26

Reasons Why It Will Hit $1 Billion: Because Avengers is the only franchise in the history of the movies to go 4/4 in terms of hitting $1 billion at the global box office.  Harry Potter, Star Wars, Jurassic World, Toy Story...none of them have the perfect 4/4 batting average that the Avengers movies do.  And Disney knows it-they are trotting out not just the return of Robert Downey, Jr., but also "plucked from the dead" Chris Evans and a potential sendoff for Chris Hemsworth (wouldn't be super stunned if ScarJo has a cameo they're keeping secret too).  Everyone in America will be curious about this.

Reasons Why It Won't Hit $1 Billion: Because, with the very big exception of Spider-Man (which, honestly, is its own thing at this point), the entire post-Endgame plan for the MCU has been a critical and commercial failure of epic proportions.  Look at last year-there were three MCU films, and not only did none of them make more than $600 million, there's a decent argument to be made that none of them so much as made a profit.  Between lazy movies and toss-away TV shows, the 21st Century jewel in Disney's crown is increasingly at risk of being permanently tarnished.

What It Means for the Rest of the Year: No other movie makes sense to put next to Avengers: Doomsday.  No other movie has the stakes to perform the way it will need to perform, no other movie has more riding on its success.  It could easily be a $2 billion movie and a close to a gigantic year for Disney...or totally upend a two-decades long money-printing formula that will unceremoniously come to an end.

Dissecting the Globes' Box Office Prize

The Golden Globes have always been a tad ridiculous, and honestly, that's been a good chunk of their charm through the years.  This year, and we'll be visiting this in two articles this week, they largely proved that they weren't, in fact, ridiculous.  For example, the Best Musical/Comedy category, which in the 1990's cited films as indisputably comedic (and otherwise outside of what would ever be considered for a Best Picture award at the Oscars) as Honeymoon in Vegas, Mrs. Doubtfire, and Home Alone has now graduated into only black comedies and "this is actually really funny" pictures like Bugonia, One Battle After Another, and Blue Moon.

So in a way, it's kind of refreshing that the Globes now have a category like "Cinematic and Box Office Achievement" because it's such an absurd throwback to the days when the awards were decided by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association (and their frequently eyebrow-raising acceptance of bribes from actors & studios).  The category is supposed to be about recognizing "the year's most acclaimed, highest-earning and/or most viewed films" and in order to be nominated, it must have raised at least $100 million (and at least an additional $50 million internationally) and/or have "commensurate digital streaming viewership."  This year, the nominees are Avatar: Fire and Ash, F1, KPop Demon Hunters, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Sinners, Weapons, Wicked; For Good, and Zootopia 2.

This list is mildly ridiculous for multiple reasons.  For starters, one film 100% does not qualify based on the criteria set forth.  There is no doubt that Avatar 3 will hit the financial markers (only an idiot would think otherwise), and is likely to be one of, if not the highest-grossing films at the US domestic box office...but it technically hasn't opened yet.  How on earth are we to know whether or not it deserves a box office prize when we haven't seen its box office yet?  KPop Demon Hunters was surely a global phenomenon, and almost certainly qualifies under the streaming numbers, but given that there isn't an objective body like there is for the box office for streaming numbers, it's worth noting that it didn't achieve these box office numbers-its global box office was a paltry $24 million, hardly a "box office champ."

Looking deeper, all of the other films that premiered hit the touchpoints, but not all of them are considered to be financial successes.  Wicked: For Good, despite a strong debut and limitless buzz, will make $150-200 million less that its predecessor despite a built-in audience, and while it turned a profit, it definitely didn't hit its overall expectations.  Mission Impossible 8 likely didn't even make a profit, as even if its lowest estimated cost (it was made for $3-400 million) barely covers costs against a $600 million gross.  So if you want to get technical, four of these eight films barely cross the line into being considered an undisputed box office champ.

So I was thinking-if you're going to do this, who should have been nominated?  I'll keep the four that feel qualified as I agree-the box office on F1, Weapons, Sinners, and Zootopia 2 by all measures belong on this list (for the record, I suspect Avatar 3 will be universally-considered success, but it's too early to know that for certain).  For the last four remaining ones, I'm going to break the rules a little bit-I think, regardless of gross, the film needs to have been a true, unexpected outperformer at the box office.  A film that, say, made $80 million against a $10 million budget is far more impressive than Wicked 2.

I would add in A Minecraft Movie, a stupid film that made almost $1 billion against a budget of $150 million despite a critical drubbing and in the process surely started a franchise off of just a computer game (a steep hill in today's Hollywood).  I'd also find room for The Conjuring: Late Rites, another movie that critics didn't like but the box office on it was mammoth-it made nearly $500 million on a $55 million budget, and made $100 million more than the most successful film in the franchise (and more than double the last Conjuring movie).

Both of these two films fit the Globes rules (Minecraft, in particular, feels like a pretty foolish skip for the awards body).  For the final two, I'll bend them, but with good reason.  The first film I'd nominate is Dog Man, an extension of the Captain Underpants franchise, and a movie that did surprisingly well despite a January release date (usually a bad time to open a children's film), making $145 million on a $40 million budget, outearning the first Captain Underpants movie, and launching another franchise.  This feels worthy-it's likely that it can make a ton from merchandising on top of a sizable gross, and if they can keep their future budgets in check (the most famous voice actor in the movie is Pete Davidson, who is hardly in a position to, say, demand Chris Pratt in Mario-sized paychecks), it's a good source of income for Universal going forward.  Certainly they're excited-it should be a movie they nominate.

The last nomination is maybe the year's single most impressive achievement at the box office (aside from Sinners): Materialists.  A romantic drama without any source material (i.e. this doesn't come with a Colleen Hoover name attached) to boost its box office and despite solid reviews, not an award campaign in sight, Materialists made a gargantuan $108 million on a $20 million budget.  Coming off of a string of high-profile flops, this was a godsend for Dakota Johnson (and quite frankly Chris Evans) in terms of keeping them in leading roles, and is the type of film that doesn't make $100 million anymore-can you think of another film this year that so unexpectedly crossed the line into $100 million?  And not that it matters, but Materialists is very good-it having "Golden Globe-nominated" wouldn't be the worst thing...particularly since its box office more than deserved it.

What Will Be the Next $1 Billion Movie?

We are continuing our brief "annual articles" run on the blog (where I'm taking a sabbatical from my hiatus to do five articles I really want to write, and then will go back into hibernation) with one of my absolute favorite articles to write annually: the $1 billion movie prediction.  Box office in 2024 was down 3% compared to 2023, which is honestly surprising given the number of tentpole franchises in 2023 (there were three Marvel films in 2023 compared to just one this year, for example) and so I thought it'd be a larger dip.  This was driven by larger-than-expected box office in North America (much of the downside was in China), and resulted in at least two $1 billion movies (Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine) with Moana 2 almost certain to clear $1 billion sometime next week, giving us three movies in total to reach that milestone.

It has become an annual tradition on the blog for us to predict for the upcoming year which films are likeliest to hit $1 billion.  The first $1 billion movie came in 1997 with Titanic, and since 2008's The Dark Knight, every year (save for the pandemic-impacted year of 2020) has had at least one movie that crossed the threshold.  I actually did really well with predicting last time-I called both Inside Out 2 and Deadpool & Wolverine in my Top 5, and while I didn't predict Moana 2, to my credit it hadn't been announced yet (I have confidence that I would've guessed it in my Top 5 given the first one's success on Disney+).  Two of the other three contenders I guessed (Despicable Me 4 and Wicked) were enormous successes, and there's a decent chance Wicked will upset Dune 2 to get into the Top 5, meaning I'll have called 80% of the Top 5 (the fifth film I guessed, Joker 2, I definitely missed but then so did all of Hollywood in their assessment of that movie).

I have listed below the five films I think are most likely to make it to $1 billion, listed chronologically by their current release dates.  I have confidence that 2025 will have at least a couple of $1 billion movies (we've been averaging about 2.5 since the quarantine lifted, I don't see that changing), though I do wonder if we're ever going to totally get back to pre-pandemic theater returns or if 2019 might've been a high-water mark for ticket dollars.  Without further adieu, let's dive in!

Honorable Mention: I'll name-check a few contenders below that also should be in the running here, but two films that don't neatly fit into comparisons to the below films but deserve a shout-out in an article likes this are Minecraft and Wicked 2.  Minecraft is a global phenomenon movie in the vein of Mario and The Last of Us, both of which were gargantuan successes.  The trailers do not inspire confidence, but if this clicks, I would imagine that we're going to see a lot of people talking about video game movies the way we talked about comic book movies in the 2010's.  Wicked 2 could follow in the footsteps of Inside Out, Dune, and Moana, where an increased audience at home causes the movie to outgross its predecessor, but I have my doubts.  The second half of the musical is much darker than the first, and it won't have as much time to grow in only a year's time.  Both will probably be hits, but I don't think $1 billion hits which is why they aren't below.

Mission Impossible - The Final Reckoning

Release Date: May 23, 2025

Reasons It Will Hit $1 Billion: Tom Cruise showed in 2022 that he has what it takes to make a nostalgic throwback into a surprise $1 billion phenomenon in Top Gun: Maverick.  The final installment of the Mission Impossible franchise, which in some ways also feels like it could be the final action film in Cruise's career (he seems to be signaling this is the end of an era for the quintessential 1990's movie star) will have a lot of people turning in to see how he goes out.  Finality has been a draw in a universe where movie franchises never seem to end-Guardians of the Galaxy 3, for example, was able to hang on when other MCU films were faltering in large part due to people realizing it was the "last" movie in the franchise...could that be the case here?

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 Billion: For starters, none of the movies in the franchise have done this.  The closest that any has come is Fallout, which couldn't even hit $800 million, and was getting an extra push because it was at the height of the MoviePass craze.  This will need audience members who have largely eschewed the last movie in the franchise, which didn't even make $600 million.  Harrison Ford nostalgia wasn't enough to get people to Indiana Jones 5...can Tom Cruise nostalgia get them to Mission Impossible 8?

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: There are several action-adventure franchise extensions out in 2025, with new movies in the Predator, Tron, Karate Kid, Naked Gun, and 28 Days series premiering later this year.  Mission Impossible is the biggest (by far) of those options, and so if it isn't making it, it's hard to see these having much cache. 

Jurassic World: Rebirth

Release Date: July 2, 2025

Reasons It Will Hit $1 Billion: I mean, all of the other ones did?  If you consider Jurassic World as its own series (separate from Jurassic Park) it's the only series ever to have all of its movies hit $1 billion.  People love dinosaurs, specifically in this franchise (others they largely eschew).  There's also not a lot of other really big blockbusters this year, and they cast global movie star Scarlett Johansson AND star-of-the-moment Jonathan Bailey as the leads.

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 Billion: Chris Pratt has left the franchise, and while the dinosaurs are the true stars, Pratt's box office prowess (even Garfield was a hit last year) is enviable, and not necessarily duplicative.  I think the bigger problem is that they continually churn out terrible movies on the memory of one perfect one...how long can that actually last?  The last one just BARELY made $1 billion.

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: One of the biggest reasons I'm worried about the 2025 box office picture is that there's not a lot of films like Jurassic World: Rebirth this year.  Star Wars, Harry Potter, Fast & the Furious...we aren't seeing anything new from the most beloved franchises other than Jurassic World (and #5 on this list), which leaves little room for error if one of the big tentpoles crumble (particularly given there's not a lot of obvious contenders for *gasp* something original to succeed!).  As a result, if Jurassic World falters, it's less about a group of films that might matter and more that we might just be having a long year.

The Fantastic Four: First Steps

Release Date: July 25, 2025

Reasons It Will Hit $1 Billion: Deadpool becoming the first superhero film in three years to hit $1 billion proved that there's still juice in the can for the comic book genre even if it's not as consistently lucrative as it once was.  There are four major comic book movies coming out in 2025, none with the box office guarantee of uniting Hugh Jackman & Ryan Reynolds, but all with potential.  Of the four, my bet for the likeliest winner is Fantastic Four, which stars Pedro Pascal (who is coming off of the major successes of The Last of Us, The Mandalorian, and Gladiator II right now), and honestly feels like a Marvel bet that will work (i.e. this feels like one that Disney is putting so much attention into, I kind of get the vibes that it will be genuinely good).

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 Billion: Fantastic Four is something of a running joke in terms of quality, as every big-screen attempt at the franchise has failed in the past, and I say this with great sadness as it's my all-time favorite comic book series (I used to rush with my brother to buy editions of it at our local Pamida).  It's possible that people are over comic books, and even if they aren't, post-pandemic the biggest successes have been Spider-Man, Deadpool, & Batman at the box office...all more established as a fan favorite than the Fantastic Four.

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: Hollywood takes a long time to catch a trend on the decline (just look at how long it took action films to fall out of fashion in the 1990's), but they will eventually catch it.  After the major failures of The Marvels, Madame Web, & Aquaman 2, it's hard not to see the writing on the wall-comic book movies need a hit (and not a guaranteed one like Deadpool 3).  Captain America 4, Thunderbolts, & Superman are also ambassadors (for the record, Superman, which had a well-received trailer, was my #6 entry for this list as I do think it has a lot of potential) of the genre, but if none of them click...are we going to start to see this fade from relevance?

Zootopia 2

Release Date: November 26, 2025

Reasons It Will Hit $1 Billion: The formula is simple-after Inside Out and Moana, getting an animated film from the mid-2010's, one that has been playing regularly on Disney+ screens, as well as still fresh enough for Gen Z to feel a nostalgia for it as one of their own formative movies, it makes sense that Disney would try for a third.  Zootopia is the only other movie of this time frame that could pull off this type of appeal, and unlike the other two, it makes the most sense for a sequel.  It's possible it might not just be a hit, but given its November release date, it might also end Disney's current drought with winning the Oscar for Animated Feature (if Inside Out 2 loses as expected, it'll be their longest ever).

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 Billion: Zootopia is well-loved, but it doesn't have the same lasting pop culture cache of Inside Out or (especially) Moana.  That's honestly the only thing I can think of though-this makes total sense as a greenlight, and were it not for the guarantee of the last film on this list, it'd be the one movie I was absolutely confident would make the $1 billion club.

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: Disney got all three $1 billion movies last year (the first time ever that we've had 100% of the 3+ $1 billion movies from the same studio).  They've got other opportunities if people are back into their live-action fare (Mufasa won't hit $1 billion, but it'll paw past $500 million this weekend, and almost certainly $600 and maybe $700 million in the coming weeks after a slow start), as both Snow White and Lilo & Stitch are opportunities to revitalize that avenue.  Other animated movies like Elio and The Bad Guys 2 don't have the same calling-card that Zootopia 2 has, but I'm watching (and hopeful especially for Elio, the rare original thought from the Mouse House recently).

Avatar: Fire and Ash

Release Date: December 19, 2025

Reasons It Will Hit $1 Billion: Not only has the first two films crossed the $1 billion mark...they've also crossed the $2 billion mark.  Avatar is a guaranteed "must see in theaters" for audiences, given Cameron's groundbreaking special effects & his ability to bring a quality to his work that few other directors are able to maintain (he also is the only filmmaker who can convince lay audiences to wear 3-D glasses in mass, adding to his box office totals).  The movie could make less-than-half of what the last one made and still qualify for this list, so I'm absolutely confident we'll get at least one $1 billion movie in 2025.

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 Billion: If Avatar 3 doesn't hit $1 billion, the entire industry needs to unplug and reboot.  The only way I don't see this making at least $1 billion is if it wasn't released in 2025 and James Cameron delayed it again.

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: Again, there's no comparison to Avatar.  I do wish that this was the end of the series, so that Cameron might have the chance to do at least one more original idea before he makes his own journey to Pandora (he's 70 and makes 1-2 movies a decade...I worry we might only get Avatar from him going forward), but nothing else in 2025 compares to this.

Hollywood's Box Office Problem

If you follow me on my social media connected to this account compared to solely reading this blog, one of the things you may notice is that I talk a lot more about box office on Twitter than I do on this blog.  Part of that is because this is a personal, side hustle blog, one that I don't have enough time to get all of my thoughts out about as ephemeral of a subject as box office (hence why I subject myself to the increasingly terrifying world of Twitter).  But with the high-profile disappointments in recent weeks of, specifically, The Fall Guy & Furiosa at the domestic box office (both films will, despite having just come out, almost certainly end up in the red), I wanted to talk about this in-depth and give some longer-form thoughts on a subject I think about a lot: the financial health of the movie industry.

This is a big topic, so I want to provide a few ground rules here.  First, this is not going to be about critical quality of these movies.  I haven't yet seen Furiosa (I was on vacation last week, something I'll probably write about a bit in the coming days, as right now I'm getting back into my routines & also appear to have gotten something of a cold while I was on my cruise so I'm focusing on getting better), and I didn't really like The Fall Guy.  But my own personal thoughts on movies rarely impact box office (great movies have flopped since the beginning of Hollywood, terrible movies have made gobs of money before...this isn't about that).  I will also say that I don't think that it's too early to state that these movies are going to be flops, even if they just recently came out.  It's possible the films can have decent word-of-mouth or stronger legs than what their opening weekends entail.  The drop off, in fact, for The Fall Guy specifically is not bad, but we know due to its weak opening box office and the quick turn to streaming that there's no way that it has a sort of long theatrical shelf-life like Elemental did last year-the film cost $150 million, and the standard rule of thumb is that you need to make double your budget to make a profit (so $300 million)-that is not happening theatrically, period.  So no, I don't think it's too early to talk about this film's box office failure...though the size of that failure is very much an unwritten tale.

These are also not a new thing in 2024.  Despite a lot of box office recovery last year, driven in large part due to the "Barbenheimer" effect, we saw a number of major flops in theaters, including films like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and the clear underperformance of expected blockbuster films such as Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning - Part 1 and The Little Mermaid.  The Fall Guy and Furiosa are part of a larger trend at the movies-people are not showing up in the numbers that Hollywood is expecting.  This isn't all new (again, movies have missed box office expectations before), but it is a distinct post-pandemic pattern.  So, let's just agree for the sake of the article there is a problem.

What is causing the problem is up for debate, but I'm going to start out right now with what I don't think it is.  First, it's not because "movie tickets cost too much."  This is wrong for a variety of reasons, but mostly because movie ticket prices have largely kept in-line with inflation, and honestly, thanks to deals like AMC A-List, are in many cases cheaper than they would've been twenty years ago.  When people complain about movie ticket prices, what they really mean is they are complaining about the cost of a babysitter, concession prices, or eating out before the movie (all of which are more than just a movie ticket price)-movie ticket prices aren't that expensive compared to virtually any other form of entertainment.  People saying "it's because they cost too much" is (and I'm not going to mince words here) a stupid person's answer to a complicated problem.  So get that out of your head-that's not the issue.  The same can be said for "theater avoidance" post-Covid.  People are back to traveling, they're back to work, they're back to meeting with friends...no one is avoiding things they want to do anymore (not in great enough numbers to matter) due to Covid in 2024.

What is a problem is five things: streaming, a fractured pop culture, film's inaccessibility with social media, unmanageable budgets, and lack of ingenuity in Hollywood.  Let's start with streaming.  One of the biggest reasons that I'm confident that The Fall Guy won't come close to making back its budget is that you can already watch it at your house.  While it costs $20 (nearly twice the cost of an average movie ticket), that will cut its box office, and more so, it trains the audience to think "wait until it's on streaming."  Streaming isn't actually that much cheaper in the long-run.  I subscribe to AMC A-List, which allows for the equivalent of unlimited movies (a maximum of three a week, which given current release schedules, is plenty even for someone who goes to the cinema as often as I do), and costs roughly what I pay for a streaming service.  But it's something that people are already paying for, so they don't think about how Netflix or Max also expensive.  

This wouldn't be an issue if streaming were as profitable as the post-theatrical solutions from, say, 1986-2010 would've been.  Then, you had a lucrative DVD market and a profitable second life for films on cable; if a film didn't make back its gross in a theatrical run, it could do so from home video.  There are actually films (such as Office Space, Showgirls, and Heathers) that turned a "flop" theatrical run into a financially profitable turn for the movie solely due to their eventual DVD sales.  With streaming, there's no real way to measure this, both because it's not entirely clear why someone is subscribing (just what they're watching), and because you don't make more money if someone is watching The Fall Guy specifically in the way you would from selling a DVD or higher ad revenue as a result of running on cable, it doesn't improve the film's bottom line.  Streaming is a way for a motion picture to gain a wider audience, but unless they're doing digital rentals, it's not a place to make more money for the film specifically.

No studio has handled this transition more poorly than Disney.  The studio has one of the glossiest and most coveted streaming service brands, with hit shows like The Mandalorian and Loki, as well as owning a catalog of shows like The Simpsons and Bluey, both insanely popular.  Quite frankly, combined with Disney's long catalog of theatrical releases that stretch back to the 1930's, there was no need for it to really get into the straight-to-streaming movie business post the Covid vaccines...but it did.  Films like Luca, Disenchanted, and Hocus Pocus 2, movies that all easily could've crossed $100 million given their fanbases, were released solely on Disney+.  This continued long past when they needed to do so.  There is perhaps no single movie that shows how little studios understood the damage that putting films that look like theatrical releases direct-to-streaming more than Disney's Turning Red.  A Pixar film with an adorable main character (a giant red panda), the movie not only could've been a hit, but it also could've been a new franchise (it regularly features into Disney's popular mystery toy brands for a reason).  But it launched on Disney+, and it trained audiences to expect films like this (i.e. beautiful animated films that cost nearly $200 million) to be on streaming-films that cost too much to exist on streaming, so basically an impossible business practice.  I firmly believe that there is a straight line between Disney's choice to release Turning Red on their streaming platform and the disappointing box office receipts of Lightyear, Strange World, and Wish.

Let's talk about some of the industry's other problems, because streaming on its own is not causing this (though it is the #1 issue).  I said above that the growth of TikTok and a fractured pop culture are also to blame.  The thing about movies is-they used to be a bigger deal to the cultural zeitgeist at large.  Part of the reason that "Barbenheimer" was such a phenomenon was because everyone in America was doing it-it was something that couldn't wait until it came out on streaming for you to be able to take part of the "cool thing" to do on social media.  Movies, in general, are a terrible match for modern social media.  Platforms like Instagram & Facebook are ostensibly about creating your own individual path on the internet (even if, in reality, it becomes about conforming to the quickest and fastest opinions & takes), but movies aren't about that.  They're about a shared experience with strangers, one that you experience in a darkened room (i.e. no cameras to prove that it happened), and are about a discussion afterward, rather than just a picture & a caption.  Movies, quite frankly, are generally too smart for social media.  In a different era, this was okay.  People would want to have discussions about cinema in the same way they wanted to discuss last night's episode of television or the latest bestselling novel; in order to be "cool" you needed to keep up.  In a world where the biggest TV show on streaming can be Suits (a cable television show long off the air) there's very few movies that can become "important" enough to get casual audiences to come to it without having some sort of clear cache or calling card.  And in a world where TikTok has destroyed people's attention spans (a conversation for a different day, but try going a week without using your phone/laptop while watching movies & television and see if you can do it without it feeling like you're having withdrawal symptoms...I recently did this by force, and it was honestly petrifying how hard it was to do), people increasingly don't have the patience to invest even two hours into longer-form storytelling.

Some of this is stuff that's going to be very hard for Hollywood to get past.  I think streaming is clearly a terrible business model that no one thought through when they went all-in, but Pandora's Box is open & I don't know how you close it (though they need to stop releasing movies that would've been released theatrically on streaming, and bring back the longer theatrical window at the very least).  And social media and its impact on people's attention spans & ability to constructively think...that's a larger issue, and given how easily fascist online movements have been able to weaponize it (particularly amongst young people), its impact on the movie industry is not something that should be on the top of the concern list.  The last two things, however, can be fixed by Hollywood in-house.

The first is around budgets, and with that, it's worth noting the box office picture right now is not all bad news.  The same weekend that Furiosa was gaining headlines for the slowest Memorial Day weekend in decades, The Garfield Movie made almost $100 million at the global box office.  That isn't enough to quite put it in the black, but there's no doubt that it'll get there, likely by the end of next weekend.  This is because The Garfield Movie cost $60 million.  It's probable that the film's star Chris Pratt will get some backend deals out of it, but Sony is 100% making a profit off of this movie, principally because it didn't cost that much to make.  Garfield isn't the only film that was able to carve out a profit this year thanks to keeping its budget trim.  Mean Girls, The Beekeeper, and Bob Marley: One Love all not only crossed the $100 million mark, but thanks to trimmer budgets, they all made money in doing so.  This doesn't entirely help the theatrical industry (they do need the occasional Avatar or Barbie to get outsized profits), but a steady stream of mid-level hits would do a world of good.

It's not a case where all major blockbusters with gargantuan budgets are going to fail.  Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes cost $160 million, meaning it needs to make north of $300 million to turn a profit-it'll do that in the next week, and will end with a profitable theatrical run.  But that's a franchise that you'd expect to be able to beat $300 million-the last three films in the series, in fact, did so.  The Fall Guy and Furiosa...not so much.  Much has been made about The Fall Guy being a remake of a little-remembered television series, which I don't think is its problem (I honestly think most audiences assumed it was an original property).  Its problem is it cost $150 million when it didn't need to do so.  You could easily have made this film for half of that, and you should have.  The effects aren't good enough for that kind of money, and the calling-card here was about it being a glossy rom-com with an action adventure quotient (i.e. no one is seeing The Fall Guy to see the VFX).  Had it cost $60-70 million (which is what it should have) it would have made a profit by now.  The same can be said for Furiosa.  A prequel to the critically-acclaimed Mad Max: Fury Road, it's worth remembering that this film didn't feature the breakout star of that picture (Charlize Theron did not return as the titular character), and despite critical hosannas, Mad Max: Fury Road barely turned a profit.  To assume that a sequel without the star that comes out a decade after it was important to pop culture (and hasn't had a video market or constant cable television viewings like the original films did to grow its audience) would make more money was always a losing bet.  These films are not indicative of the summer ahead.  Hollywood has surer bets with Inside Out 2, Deadpool & Wolverine, and Despicable Me 4...I still very much anticipate 2024 will have a $1 billion movie before we turn to a new calendar...but these movies always felt risky given their costs.

This brings me to my final point-it's clear that Hollywood doesn't know what audiences want anymore.  Look at some of the biggest hits of last year-many of them were unexpected victories.  Barbie and Oppenheimer, obviously, stand out the most, but films like Wonka and Five Nights at Freddy's both out-earning Aquaman 2 was on no one's radar last year.  Hollywood has been using the same playbook for too long-there were six comic book movies that came out last year alone, and only one of them (Guardians of the Galaxy 3) could really be called a hit.  To illustrate this point, in 1981 the highest-grossing film was Raiders of the Lost Ark.  It took 43 years for them to make five Indiana Jones movies.  To put that in perspective, the top-grossing film of 2002 was Spider-Man...in less than half of the time of the Indiana Jones movies, we've had nine Spider-Man movies (and that's only counting the ones where he's in the title-throw in the Avengers films and we hit double digits).  Of course the audience is going to get bored, and these don't feel special anymore.  There's still a place for sequels or reboots (Top Gun: Maverick and The Super Mario Bros. Movie both made $1 billion decades after they were last in theaters), but an over-reliance on established intellectual property was surely a house of cards that was going to hurt Hollywood.  Audience tastes change (just ask fans of the western or the musical), and the stagnancy (and over-reliance) on things like comic book movies and retreads of brands like Star Wars and Mission Impossible was always going to bite them in the ass.  That it's happening at a time when the theatrical industry is struggling so much is tragic & scary for fans of cinema...but it sure ain't a coincidence.

What Will Be the Next Billion Dollar Movie?

With the year now over, the global box office is officially in the books, and 2023 was (surprisingly, to me, anyway) the best year since the pandemic, making well over a $1 billion more than 2022...though nowhere approaching the $11.4 billion that were reached in 2019 (this year should be just slightly over $9 billion when everything is finished counting).  The year appears to be going out with a bang, with some surprise hits at the box office, specifically Wonka, which should hit $400 million globally by Friday, the rare surprise hit this year.

I'm skeptical about the box office being cause for celebration for a variety of reasons, and the biggest being-it should have been bigger.  Franchises like Guardians of the Galaxy, Ant-Man, Fast and the Furious, Captain Marvel, Aquaman, Mission Impossible, Indiana Jones, Transformers, Hunger Games, Trolls, Shazam, & Hercule Poirot ALL failed to make as much as their immediate predecessor, and huge launches like The Flash, Wish, Blue Beetle, Haunted Mansion, Dungeons & Dragons, and Elemental either barely broke even or outright bombed.  This year audiences decided they were tired of comic books, and even scarier for the industry, tired of Disney, as the Mouse House's only undisputed hit (Guardians of the Galaxy 3) couldn't even match its predecessor.  This year would've looked like an $11 billion year pre-pandemic, and it has to be chilling for studios that it couldn't get there.

One of my favorite recurring articles in the past few years we've done is me predicting at the top of the year which films have the best shot of passing the $1 billion mark.  Last year, we had two movies that got there-Barbie and The Super Mario Brothers Movie.  It is possible we'll get a third (Oppenheimer is sitting just past $950 million) with Oscar-related re-releases for the Christopher Nolan epic, but I doubt we'll get more.  Even if some of this year's holiday-related releases (specifically Wonka) will crack the eventual Top 10 for the 2023 releases once they're done in theaters, none of them will hit $1 billion.

I will confess-when I did my article last year, I didn't predict any of these correctly.  Barbie, Mario, and Oppenheimer were not on my list, and while I kind of kick myself over Mario in retrospect, I don't think anyone saw the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon coming six months out.  I had predicted Indiana Jones 5, Mission Impossible 7, Guardians of the Galaxy 3, The Little Mermaid, and Aquaman 2...and only Guardians got above $800 million.  We're in a weird area where a lot of the types of films that have hit $1 billion traditionally (to date 52, not adjusting for inflation) like comic book films, animated features, Disney live-action remakes, and high-profile legacy sequels all failed to resonate in a big way in 2023...

...and even if these film tropes were still on top, that's still not necessarily a good thing for 2024.  Analysts are already saying that 2024, in part due to delays caused by the studios prolonging the writer's & actor's strikes unnecessarily, will come up at least $1 billion short of 2023.  Movies like Captain America: Brave New World, Avatar 3, Thunderbolts, and Elio were all originally 2024 releases, but they have moved out.  As a result, we have what might be the first non-pandemic year since 2007 that won't have a billion-dollar release.

But I'm still up for the challenge of guessing, and am not going to break tradition just because the studios wouldn't pay the artists who make them rich.  So below, we are going to have the five films I think are the most likely to get to $1 billion in 2024, listed in their (current) chronological order, along with some notes.  If you think I've missed any (or think I'm right!), sound off in the comments.

Honorable Mention: I would have considered Spider-Man: Beyond the Spider-Verse even though its recent box office probably means it'd struggle to get past $1 billion (it did phenomenally, but didn't even hit $700 million), but it's unlikely to be released in 2024 and is probably looking at a 2025 release date.  I don't think I would've put it on this Top 5, but on the off-chance it hits a Christmas release date, I think it at least warrants being mentioned in this article as a billion-dollar contender.

Inside Out 2

Release Date: 6/14/24

Reasons It Will Hit $1 billion: Disney/Pixar has had a lot of major releases flop or underwhelm in the last three years, particularly their animated films, but it's worth noting that not a single one of those flops was a direct sequel to a major success (Lightyear doesn't count-it's a prequel at best), which was a really popular way to make $1 billion prior to the pandemic.  Frozen II, Incredibles II, and Toy Story 3 & 4 all pulled off $1 billion paydays, and the nostalgia factor for Inside Out 2 will be huge.  The original film made $850 million in 2015, which would normally be a fabulous springboard into a billion dollar sequel, and it's clear Disney is betting hard on this-it's not out for six months, and you can't go to a movie without seeing a trailer for it already.

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 billion: Prior to the pandemic, this would've been a slam-dunk, and the easiest call for $1 billion on this list.  But since the pandemic, it's hard to grasp just how badly Disney+ and the "I'll wait until it's on streaming" mentality has hurt the studio.  Films like The Little Mermaid and Guardians of the Galaxy 3 also would've been slam-dunk $1 billion hits in the before times...will Inside Out 2 prove that it's simply not possible for Disney to hit $1 billion with people just counting on its streamer?

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: For Disney, it could be bad.  Disney has an untitled animated feature coming out in November, and has the animated sequel to 2019's The Lion King, entitled Mufasa that would have also been a threat for $1 billion pre-pandemic.  If Disney can't hit with this...I'm out of ideas for how they solve their problem short of canning Disney+.

Despicable Me 4

Release Date: 7/3/24

Reasons It Will Hit $1 billion: One of the reasons that I know that Disney is the cause of its miseries is because while no Disney animated film since 2019's Frozen II & The Lion King has crossed $500 million, three animated features from other studios have.  One of those was Minions: The Rise of Gru (the others being Mario and Across the Spider-Verse), which nearly hit $1 billion in 2022 with $940 million.  In fact, four films in the Despicable Me franchise (the second & third of the original series, and both Minions movies) have made north of $950 million, which puts the series in Harry Potter/Star Wars territory.  The fourth film from the original franchise, which hasn't started advertising yet, will be a big deal, and goes into the summer as the surest studio bet.

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 billion: It's probably the safest bet of this crew.  The only thing that it might have going against it as the sixth film from in this series is franchise fatigue, which we saw a lot of in 2023 with Indiana Jones, Fast and the Furious, and Mission Impossible all failing to launch as expected.  But if I had to pick only one single film to hit $1 billion, this would be the one I'd select.

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: There are a lot of non-Disney animated films out this year, and many of them are high-profile (not counting the possibility of Spider-Verse 3).  Transformers One, The Garfield Movie, The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, and (especially) Kung Fu Panda 4 would be films I'd be looking out for if I knew Despicable Me 4 was going to hit $1 billion, particularly the latter as nostalgia for that could also be high.  I don't think any are a threat for a billion dollars even if Despicable Me 4 does well, but it'd be a good sign for their fortunes if the Minions blew up the box office again.

Deadpool 3

Release Date: 7/26/24

Reasons It Will Hit $1 billion: The first two Deadpool films both did shockingly well and shockingly similar at the box office (both made within $3 million of each other, right past the $780 million mark).  This film has a lot of reasons to rejoice coming into 2024.  For starters, it's the only MCU film all year, and with the DCEU dead, it's one of only five major comic book pictures coming out next year.  Due to this, Deadpool 3 will benefit from something no recent MCU film has been able to claim-a shortage of comic books at your local theater.  It's also, similar to Guardians of the Galaxy 3, a franchise that people genuinely seem to like, and by adding Hugh Jackman (and the X-Men) to the mix, it could get new looks from people who aren't as familiar with the R-Rated franchise.  Joker proved R-rated films can get to $1 billion...

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 billion: ...but it's still rare.  The biggest issue for this is that it will be R-rated, which is a first for the MCU, and means that it will rely less upon family crowds and more upon adults & date nights, which is a new strategy for the MCU.  This hasn't hurt the past Deadpool films (which have made remarkable numbers given their production costs & Ryan Reynolds' leading man track record), but they didn't get to $1 billion.  Could the MCU's return to the club really come from something so against-the-grain to their formula?

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: As I said, this is the only MCU film in 2024, and while there is a DC film (we'll talk about it in a second), it's not DCEU and is more in the Deadpool format, so I don't know how much this will portend for guessing the success of other movies.  Sony is releasing three comic books movies to take advantage of the oxygen that Disney & Warner Brothers are giving them, with Madame Web, Kraven the Hunter, and Venom 3 all coming out later this year.  The original Venom had the kind of gross that might hint at a sequel getting to $1 billion, but the second one was hurt by the pandemic so I can't get a read on where it stands with audiences.  It's possible that some of these might gain from not having so much competition...but I think mostly they're just trying not to be the next Morbius.

Joker: Folie a Deux

Release Date: 10/4/24

Reasons It Will Hit $1 billion: Well, the first one did.  In one of the biggest surprises of the gargantuan 2019 box office, Joker became the highest-grossing R-rated film of all time and the only R-rated film to date to cross the $1 billion line.  Its sequel is genuinely unexpected, and the kind of follow-up that only comes when your film makes $1 billion (Joaquin Phoenix is reportedly getting $20 million to do a sequel to the film that won him an Oscar).  The movie has added Lady Gaga to the collection as Harley Quinn, so the celebrity will be at peak, and between Phoenix & Gaga, whether or not it makes $1 billion, I am confident that it will have the most insane press tour of the year.

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 billion: The first film was a perfect storm of good reviews, strong movie theater attendance, comic book love peaking, & solid word-of-mouth.  This will now have to find a way to top that, which will not be easy.  It's also an unplanned sequel, which used to be the norm...but that also used to be why sequels were shorthand for "not as good."  If audiences don't respond to another go of a film they didn't expect to get a second helping of, it'll probably make tons of money, but not $1 billion.

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: We have a number of high-profile sequels/installments in beloved franchises.  That was not a recipe for success in 2023, but if people are more intrigued by going into the past (it is an election year, after all) next year, they've got Godzilla x Kong, Furiosa, Alien Romulus, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes, Twisters, Gladiator II, Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire, and Dune Part Two all as options if they're so inclined to give us another Top Gun: Maverick.

Wicked, Part 1

Release Date: 11/27/24

Reasons It Will Hit $1 billion: Last year I didn't bet on originals that were recognizable global brands, missing both Barbie and Mario as the actual $1 billion winners.  I'm not making that same mistake again, and the closest you have to a brand literally everyone knows is Wicked.  Assuming that it hits its release date (and does well with critics), I think this will be a gargantuan hit.  It has recognizable songs, is a known property, and a good late-in-the-year film for the whole family to go to, helping ticket sales.  Put it this way-everyone is going to be curious about this in the same way they were Barbie.  It also had the good sense to hire global superstar Ariana Grande as one of its leads, which should help internationally.

Reasons It Won't Hit $1 billion: A couple of reasons spring to mind.  First, no live-action musical has ever done it.  Second, it's been postponed so many times I wonder if it'll hit its release date (I'll believe it when I see it).  Third, I do wonder if it will be good-the creative decision to split the film into halves reeks of someone who doesn't know how to edit, and that doesn't portend well for reviews (which don't matter for opening weekend, but definitely do for legs).  And lastly, I do think the casting could be an issue (i.e. I don't think Ariana Grande was the right choice for this movie).  But I feel like this is the closest we get in 2024 to a movie in the mold of Barbie/Mario, so I'm including it.

What It Could Mean for the Rest of the Year: There are very few "franchise starter" films that we haven't already listed that could make it here.  The one that I'm most curious about its box office performance would be Borderlands, which is based on one of the bestselling video games of all-time.  After Mario and Five Nights at Freddy's this year, it would be foolish not to at least consider this is a sleeper hit in the making.

Oscar's Visual Effects Race at the Halfway Point

There's been a lot of ink spilled about the box office this year, including on this blog.  This past weekend gave us another installment in "Hollywood no longer knows how to budget a movie" with Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny scoring a $130 million opening weekend ($60 million domestic) that pretty much everyone is claiming is an under-performance.  I think, given the clientele (this was geared largely at adults over 40 who are less likely to show up opening weekend), we could be looking at a long legs scenario (while I'm still under that age range, I'm not far from it, and I have every intention of seeing this movie tomorrow rather than opening weekend), but it underlines the point that a movie making $130 million opening weekend should not be sign for alarm...but in this case it is because the film supposedly cost $300 million, which given the marketing budget, is almost certainly going to end up a disappointment, if not an outright flop, for one of the most storied franchises in movie history.

I'm not going to write another article about Hollywood's desperate need for originality (I've done it recently, and almost certainly will do it later this summer when we get a fuller picture of what did & didn't perform), but with Indiana Jones now premiered, we're weirdly coming close to the end of our summer blockbuster season.  Summer blockbuster season is actually more of a May-July thing, rather than a Memorial Day to Labor Day scenario, and while we have four big films coming up (Oppenheimer, Barbie, Haunted Mansion, and Mission Impossible 7), that's pretty much it.  This means that we should have a pretty good handle on one of my favorite Oscar categories to discuss...but this year we don't.  I thought it'd be fun to take a mid-year look at the race for Best Visual Effects at this year's Oscars.

The Likely Trio

Until recently, I would've counted Dial of Destiny on the list of sure things.  The buzz for it before Cannes was good (man did Disney make some mistakes with opening that at Cannes before they'd done test audiences, which purportedly was their game play to avoid spoilers leaking), and while Kingdom of the Crystal Skull missed, the other three didn't.  But while it could get there, the race feels like we have only three sure things, two of which haven't opened so "sure thing" would be more correctly in quotations.

The first is Dune 2 (you'll find that I don't usually use the longer or fancier titles as a rule for sequels because I think we should underline that we're not on Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, we're on Transformers 7, which is as creatively bankrupt as we can get in Hollywood).  The first film won, and the trailers for the second film seem like it's up a notch-it's the heavy favorite to win again this year.  The second would be Oppenheimer, which opens in a few weeks.  Christopher Nolan is not infallible in this category (he missed for The Dark Knight Rises), but given the pressure on this film to perform, and that there's no bad buzz wafting off of it yet, I think this makes it.

And the third is Guardians of the Galaxy 3.  MCU has only missed twice since 2008 when they had an eligible film (2011 & 2015), and in a year bereft of major contenders (that don't come with baggage), a film where both of the predecessors made it, the film made a profit, and the movie was noted by most critics (me included) for having the best cinematography we've seen in eons for an MCU film (at least since Eternals), there's no way it doesn't make it (and end up losing...this ain't the year the MCU's losing streak in this category ends).

Supporting Effects

So let's assume those three are nominated.  That means we've got two more to go.  One of the bigger questions at this point, if Oscar isn't in the mood for box office bombs or getting outside his comfort zone (more on both in a second) is if he throws a bone to a film with supporting or limited budget effects.  This happens occasionally (recent examples include The Irishman, Ex Machina, and The Midnight Sky), but it's rarer than you'd think.  Everything Everywhere All at Once and The Shape of Water were actual Best Picture winners that couldn't land a nomination here.  It's also worth noting that this slot might be filled by Oppenheimer-as we haven't seen the movie yet, we don't know yet whether or not this movie is going to be the "supporting effects" nominee (there's usually just one, if any).

By my measure, there's three upcoming films that will have at least some supporting effects (or less expensive effects) that could be a threat here.  Killers of the Flower Moon clearly has some effects, and Scorsese proved with The Irishman and Hugo that you shouldn't count him out of this category, but it's not clear from the trailer how effects-heavy this will be.  Poor Things is for sure effects heavy based on the trailer, but it's Yorgos Lanthimos, and while The Favourite was a huge hit with Oscar, his films are specific enough that I think we're still case-by-case if Oscar will indulge.  And then there's Barbie, which will have effects (though it's gone to great lengths to point out how little CGI is in the film itself, making a play for Production Design & Costume instead).  If it's a massive hit (and I'm sure Warner Brothers is praying it is), don't count it out here though.

The Comic Book Quandary

Guardians of the Galaxy being in my "sure things" bucket means that comic book movies are already represented here, but it's worth noting in the past ten years three of those years had at least two nominated comic book films in Visual Effects, so it's possible another nomination is in the comic book realm.

The DCEU has never been nominated for a Best Visual Effects Oscar (the first Suicide Squad movie is the only film in the collection to be nominated in ANY category), and I don't know that I expect that to happen on the wings of a massive flop like The Flash, and while I think Aquaman 2 could be a big hit (even if Flash and Blue Beetle tank), I don't see it being an Oscar contender unless it approaches its original's box office.  Even movies like Wonder Woman, which came armed with critical success, couldn't land here.

So it'd be Marvel where we'd probably get the nomination, and with Ant-Man 3 being regularly attacked for actively bad visual effects, the only option from the MCU is The Marvels, which I think might have the best effects of the three (based solely on the trailer), but the original movie didn't get nominated (despite showy de-aging for Samuel L. Jackson) and I'm a little worried about the box office on this one given the animosity male MCU fans have for Brie Larson's character.  Arguably the best option for another VFX nod is Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.  The movie is making mountains of cash (well-exceeding its predecessor), and even its detractors argue that it looks marvelous.  But it's animated, and that's only happened twice (and in both cases, for stop motion).  It has the whiff of a film that gets in for the shortlist but not the Top 5.

Oscar's Least Favorite Things

Oscar has his preferences, and especially in Visual Effects he has franchises that he loves and some that he hates.  There are four series this year where Oscar has (to date) never nominated the series in either Visual Effects or in any category, despite all four franchises being box office behemoths at one time (or the present time).  I doubt that this is the year that Fast X gets into the race, given that Oscar had better chances to nominate it at the peak of its fame and declined (and this film has been a flop domestically even if internationally it'll make a profit).

John Wick 4 is undoubtedly a hit (and supposedly a creative dynamo), and sometimes Oscar suddenly cares when those combine at a key point for a franchise (see The Bourne Ultimatum getting a trio of Oscars after the rest of the franchise was skipped), but I'll believe it when I see it.  The same can be said for Mission Impossible 7 and the Hunger Games prequel The Ballad of Songbirds & Snakes, both of which have a lot of studio hope behind them given the performance of the previous installments, but in both cases Oscar has had plenty of time and never warmed to them-why would he change now?  A shortlist position for at least one of these four seems probable, but an actual nomination...?

Box Office Misses

Which gets us to three films that Oscar has loved in the past, and whose biggest hangups are their box office.  It's worth noting that with at least two of them (Indiana Jones we'll wait and see) it's less that they were outright flops (which I think ends up being the case for The Flash) and more disappointments, as both The Little Mermaid and Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will end up in the black before all is said and done (Transformers is tracking to at least hit $400 million, The Little Mermaid is well-past $500 million), but that they were both potentially gargantuan hits that spell not only disappointment, but likely a potential end to their lucrative franchises as they've gotten too risky.

All three have a shot of making it, though.  While Transformers hasn't been in the mix for a nomination here since 2011, a reboot of sorts could've done the trick.  Indiana Jones also didn't make it for its last installment, but a reboot gave off the vibes of a series that might come back into the fold like Planet of the Apes did.  In both cases, I wonder if we're looking at shortlists but no nomination at this point.  Of these three, I think The Little Mermaid, which is the one that Disney has the biggest long-term investment in (given the live-action remake wagon is all they have lately), is probably in the best position to get in.  You have to remember that The Lion King, Snow White and the Huntsman, and Maleficent, and Christopher Robin all got in this category, and were all retellings of famous Disney stories.  I wouldn't be stunned if The Little Mermaid repeated that, even if I would argue many of the effects in the film are pretty ugly.

Is There Anything Else?

One thing I'll say right now-an original film featuring effects and being a surprise hit would definitely be something that Oscar would latch onto if audiences grant him the opportunity.  Probably the best option for that would be something like The Creator, made by the director of Rogue One, and starring John David Washington (very much still in Tenet mode).  If it's good this has sleeper hit written all over it, and that would make life a lot easier on AMPAS.

Otherwise, I don't see a lot of truly original creations coming out later this year, though there are some effects films that we don't know the extent of their effects (and obviously don't yet know their box office).  Ghostbusters: Afterlife 2 is the sequel to a film that did surprisingly well at the box office (note-it did well because it had a budget of $75 million...which perhaps a few other films on this list should've considered), and was shortlisted in 2021 for an Oscar nod.  Wonka is definitely going to be a big deal later this year, and could give us double the Chalamet in this category.  And lastly, there's The Color Purple, which (based on the trailer) is going to be far more effects-heavy than you'd have guessed if you're solely familiar with the original film or Alice Walker novel.  This early in the year, I wouldn't count any of these movies out, though they'd still count as a surprise from my current vantage point.