June 2025 finally got some speed this weekend thanks to the arrival of F1, which zoomed up $55.6 million. Brad Pitt’s second-biggest domestic launch ever (only behind another costly June tentpole, World War Z), F1 gives distributor Warner Bros. Pictures its fourth consecutive smash hit following A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, and Final Destination: Bloodlines. F1 also blew away all other live-action racecar movies and is well on its way to becoming the biggest Apple Original Films (God, I hate that studios name) title ever.
F1 began its marketing campaign a year ago and I was initially convinced that it would die on the vine. Did Americans really care about Formula One racing? Was Brad Pitt a big enough draw in 2025 to anchor a film this costly? Mea culpa on my part, because F1 shattered all expectations. Promising audiences a big thrill ride that maximized the spectacle of IMAX screens, while also featuring familiar beloved faces like Pitt and fellow Oscar-winner Javier Bardem, was enough to send F1 to the next level of box off ice stardom. Plus, a big tentpole focused on just normal people driving big cars made F1 stand out in a summer moviegoing season driven by dinosaurs, superheroes, assassins, and Tom Cruise.
With the 4th of July holiday incoming and outstanding audience word-of-mouth, expect F1 to keep doing laps around the competition for weeks to come. At the very least, it’s totally getting to $170 million domestically. Don’t be surprised if it goes farther north beyond that.
How to Train Your Dragon eased 47% this weekend to gross another $19.4 million for a $200 million domestic total. It'll surpass the original 2010 How to Train Your Dragon's domestic gross sometime next weekend.
Elio fell 49% this weekend to gross another $10.7 million. That's a noticeably larger second weekend drop than Elemental's 38%, though Elio had Juneteenth Thursday night grosses informing its opening day. More worryingly, that’s almost on par with the 52% second weekend decline of Toy Story 4, which opened to roughly $100 million more than Elio. The problem, though, is its daily grosses are still way too low. Elio has only grossed $42.2 million after ten days, less than Ratatouille's three-day opening from June 2007. Holding decently day-to-day during the week kind of putting a band-aid on a gaping wound with numbers this poor. Unless Elio pulls off a 4th of July miracle, this one’s missing $100 million domestically, a once unthinkable outcome for a summertime Pixar film.
Well, my prediction that M3gan 2.0 would become one of the ten biggest movies of summer 2025 turned out be a bit off. Not as embarrassing as when I predicted Will Ferrell and Amy Poehler's The House would be one of summer 2017's ten biggest movies, but still, wow was I off.
M3gan 2.0 only opened to $10.2 million this weekend, an absolutely catastrophic debut even with its meager $15 million budget. For starters, that's down 66% from the first M3gan's debut in January 2023. For another, among Blumhouse films, M3gan 2.0 came in behind Fantasy Island, Oculus, the first Insidious, The Gift, Wolf Man, Speak No Evil, and BlackKkKlansman, none of which had the M3gan brand name working in their favor. This is despite Universal Pictures promoting the heck out of this feature, including kicking off its marketing campaign with high-profile (and costly) Grammy and Super Bowl commercials.
Taking the original horror movie into an action/comedy direction with no scares, though, just didn’t register with people. Horror fans were turned off and Lord knows there were other options for youth-skewing action-oriented movies in the marketplace. M3gan was a phenomenon that could only really work once, particularly since it arrived less than two years after Godzilla vs. Kong kick-started domestic theatrical moviegoing again. M3gan was a sign that 2020s theatrical cinema could still provide new movies that spark conversation and memes. M3gan 2.0 didn’t offer anything near that special in the summer moviegoing season.
Also, to be blunt, as a queer person, the attempts to turn M3gan 2.0 into a “queer event” for Pride Month just didn’t click. If major studios really want to make must-see Pride Month movies, hire queer filmmakers (Jane Schoenbrun, Vera Drew, Cheryl Dunye, etc.) to make movies with actual queer people in the lead roles. It’d be so fun to see more cozy, genre entertainment that nonchalantly spotlights queer lives. Just parroting Gay Twitter catchphrases from 2016 and delivering taglines seemingly cribbed from Lindsey Naegle won’t cut the mustard.
Grossing $10 million this weekend, 28 Years Later fell a brutal 68% from its opening weekend to gross another $9.7 million. Thanks to $5.8 million in Juneteenth Thursday grosses that bolstered its debut frame, it’s no surprise this zombie movie that’s garnered divisive public reactions didn’t have a magnificent hold. Over ten days, 28 Years Later has grossed $50.3 million and is now the highest grossing entry in this franchise. Lilo & Stitch is sticking around throughout the whole summer as it grossed another $6.9 million this weekend. Easing only 29% from last frame, this feature has now grossed $400.07 million.
Even against a new PG-13 tentpole, Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning had another good hold this frame, easing just 36% for a sixth weekend gross of $4.15 million. Domestically, this feature’s now grossed $185.99 million. It should be able to get past $200 million domestically, albeit barely. Next up was Materialists, which dropped 53% to gross another $2.99 million. With $30.4 million domestically, it's now only the eighth A24 movie to crack $30+ million domestically.
Ballerina, now in its fourth weekend of release, is sliding further and further into obscurity as it grossed only $2.13 million this frame. A 53% drop from last weekend, Ballerina has only grossed $55.47 million domestically. Karate Kid: Legends fell 58% This weekend to gross another $1 million for a $51.59 million domestic total. The Phoenician Scheme, meanwhile, dropped 52% in its fifth weekend of release. Grossing another $700,000, Scheme has grossed $17.8 million, putting it ahead of The French Dispatch's domestic total.
The Life of Chuck, losing 617 theaters this frame, grossed $375,120 in its fourth weekend (a 62% drop from last frame) for a $5.66 million domestic total.
Sorry, Baby opened to $86,492 from four locations this weekend for a $21,623 per theater average. That’s similar to the $23,732 per theater average fellow A24 indie Janet Planet posted at two locations last June. Unlike recent arthouse titles like The Ballad of Wallis Island, Sorry, Baby held very well day to day over its opening weekend (it even increased 11% from its opening day), a sign that it could hold well in the weeks to come. It’ll be interesting to see how this one holds from here as A24 deploys a very gradual rollout for Sorry, Baby (it won’t expand to theaters everywhere until July 18 and 25). I have no clue why IFC Films immediately debuted an arthouse title like Hot Milk into 375 theaters, but it didn't work out as the feature grossed only $40,500 for a disastrous $108 per theater average.
The top ten movies this weekend grossed only $123 million, roughly half of which came from F1 alone. 13 years ago, the final weekend of June 2012 housed two mega openers, Ted and Magic Mike, each of which debuted to $40+ million. June 2017, meanwhile, had Despicable Me 3 and Baby Driver each scoring $20.5+ million bows (the former opened to $72.43 million). A mere nine months before movie theaters shut down for COVID-19, Annabelle Comes Home and Yesterday each opened in the $17-20.26 million range over June 2019's final frame.
Without another major newcomer in the marketplace, this final June 2025 frame came up severely short against expectations. This was the 26th weekend of 2025 and, compared to pre-COVID 26th weekends, this was the lowest gross for this time of the year since 2003. As usual, a lack of variety is the problem. Where are the YA-novel adaptations like The Fault in Our Stars? Where’s a big comedy movie? If you’re not putting out a lot of movies, a lot of people won’t show up to their local multiplex.
June 2025 is now past $800 million and, with one more day to go in the month, it'll probably top out at around $820-825 million. That's beneath the last three June's in the 2020s and the lowest-grossing June domestically (exempting 2020 and 2011) since June 2001. Relying so heavily on horror sequels, not to mention the new Pixar movie going under, really undercut the month. Summer 2025 has now grossed just a hair under $1.8 billion. I'm not going to be surprised if this season ends up topping $4+ billion simply because July 2025 is poised to be mammoth while August 2025 (with The Naked Gun, Freakier Friday, Weapons, and The Bad Guys 2) has the kind of eclectic slate June needed.
And hey, this being the final Culturess box office report, let me say thank you dear readers for reading these ramblings over the last year. Be sure to go out to your local indie theater and check out smaller titles on the big screen where they belong! There are always good, exciting, and gripping new movies to discover. I hope you all get to find ones that make life a little brighter.