Can Cruise complete mission impossible to revive Hollywood's slump?
Tom Cruise with Simon Pegg, Rebecca Ferguson and Ving Rhames will return in the latest instalment of the Mission: Impossible series.
Tom Cruise takes on what may be his final "Mission: Impossible," a new Superman will wear the red cape, and the record-setting "Avatar" sci-fi series will return to movie theatres this year as Hollywood battles to revive the industry.
Those films and more are giving cinema operators hope that the long recovery from the covid pandemic will continue in 2025. Five years after the start of the health crisis, moviegoing has not fully rebounded.
Box office receipts totaled $8.6bn (€7.9bn) last year in the United States and Canada, 25% below the pre-pandemic heights of $11.4bn (€10.5bn) in 2019. In Europe, box office results were healthier, with takings in Britain and Ireland of €1.27bn in 2024, according to Screen Ireland, marginally down on the 2023 figures.
The US film industry was disrupted again in 2023 when Hollywood writers and actors went on strike.
"That complex matrix of filmmaking, where everyone wants the best talent and the best actors and the best sets, it takes a long time to get that running again," said Tim Richards, founder and chief executive of Europe's Vue Cinemas. "2025 is going to feel the tail end of that."
Top names in the movie business will gather at the annual CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas early next month to talk about the state of the industry. The conference draws executives from Hollywood studios and multiplex operators such as AMC Entertainment, Cinemark, and Cineworld as well as owners of single theatres in small towns.
At the Academy Awards earlier this month, filmmaker and best director winner Sean Baker delivered a "battle cry" for filmmakers, distributors and audiences to support theatres.
"The theatre-going experience is under threat," he said, noting that the number of screens shrunk during the pandemic. "If we don't reverse this trend, we'll be losing a vital part of our culture," Baker added.
Shawn Robbins, director of movie analytics at Fandango and founder and owner of Box Office Theory, said the movie business is adjusting to "a new normal". "Event movies are increasingly drivers of the business," Robbins said. "There's even more weight on their shoulders in terms of box office dollars."
Moviegoers still turn out for big-budget films, Robbins said, but have shown they are happy to wait to watch others at home. "It is very common knowledge that a lot of movies will be available to stream within three to eight weeks, whereas it used to be a minimum of three months," he said.
Among the big hitters coming to theatres this year are , a movie that may be Cruise's last appearance in the long-running action franchise. "One last time," he says in the trailer. The film will debut over the US Memorial Day weekend in late May, along with Walt Disney's live-action version of animated classic .
Brad Pitt plays a Formula 1 driver in the June release , and in July, Warner Broswill release its new movie directed by filmmaker James Gunn and starring David Corenswet.
From Marvel, the anti-hero team will kick off the summer moviegoing season in early May, followed by in late July.
Around the November and December holidays, offerings include the second part of musical box office phenomenon , animated sequel and , the third film in James Cameron's film series. The first is the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the second movie ranks third.
Robbins projected 2025 would end with a slight increase in domestic box office receipts compared with last year, "maybe flirting with $9bn (€8.3bn)." He said it is unclear when ticket sales will return to pre-pandemic levels.
Richards said he believed the new would kick off "an extraordinary three to five years" for cinemas. "We're going to see (Avatar) as the tipping point," Richards said. "2026 has got an extraordinary number of great films."
