The 2025 Box Office Year in Review: Sydney and Timmy, Superheroes vs. Horror, and Studio Power Rankings

The Town with Matthew Belloni

The Ringer

Society & Culture

4.3 • 1.1K Ratings

🗓️ 7 January 2026

⏱️ 46 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Matt is joined by Puck contributor and box office guru Scott Mendelson to recap the year in moviegoing, give his take on the general disappointment in domestic box office performance, and hand out awards like Surprise Hit of the Year, Surprise Miss, and the Great Legs Award. He also checks in on the state of superhero movies and the horror genre and gives final grades to each studio (01:38). Matt finishes the show with a prediction about the 2026 Golden Globes (38:58). For a 20 percent discount on Matt’s Hollywood insider newsletter, ‘What I’m Hearing ...,’ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠click here⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Email us your thoughts! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠thetown@spotify.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Host: Matt Belloni Guest: Scott Mendelson Producers: Craig Horlbeck and Jessie Lopez Theme Song: Devon Renaldo Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:58.1	It is Wednesday, January 7th.
1:00.8	It's the first week of January,
1:01.9	so we're getting a year-end box office snapshot for 2025.
1:06.2	Overall, not great.
1:08.0	Most analysts had predicted at least $9 billion in total domestic box office,
1:12.5	that's U.S. and Canada, which would have been fine. The total was regularly above 10 billion
1:17.1	pre-COVID and topped 11 billion in 2019. This year, about 8.6 billion. Lots of reasons for that,
1:24.5	but it always comes down to the number of big budget studio movies in theaters.
1:28.6	About 110, 111 wide releases this past year.
1:31.8	And, of course, weather audiences like those movies.
1:34.6	We'll have the overseas numbers soon, but it's looking even worse there,
1:37.4	especially if you take out Néjah 2, which grossed about $2 billion in almost all of it in China.
	...

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