Despite promising titles such as James Gunn’s Superman, Jurassic World: Rebirth, and Fantastic Four: First Steps, the global collective summer box office is just below estimates. According to data sourced from Comscore, the global collective summer box office was $3.75 billion, which is less than the estimates of many box office analysts, who expected numbers on the level of 2023’s $4.01 billion. It is higher, however, than 2024’s collective summer box office of $3.68 billion.

The summer started strong with Lilo & Stitch, as the Disney live-action remake ended up being the only Summer release to gross $1 billion worldwide, making it the summer’s highest-grossing film. Jurassic World: Rebirth, released the following month, while not grossing $1 billion like the previous three Jurassic World movies, still ended up a massive success with a worldwide gross of $828 million. The problem lay in the following weeks in July and August, with James Gunn’s Superman falling behind estimates, despite skating past $600 million worldwide, and Fantastic Four: First Steps, which was supposed to hold the opening weeks in August, had significant drops in box office numbers from week to week.

The summer box office did provide some surprising hits, such as F1, which is nearing $600 million worldwide, and Zach Creggar’s Weapons, which has already made $167 million worldwide on a moderate budget of $38 million. But in general, the 2025 summer box office fell behind expectations, with not a single movie crossing $600 million at the domestic box office. Here are insights from Comscore chief analyst Paul Dergarabedian on these lower-than-expectations numbers:

Summer 2025 will match or exceed 2024, but the margins are crazy thin. I am more shocked than anyone else that we’re not going to resoundingly surpass the $4 billion collected in 2023. I guess $4 billion is a tougher threshold than we thought. And it took a Barbenheimer to do it.

Dergarabedian also provided insights on why he remains optimistic in the box office throughout the rest of the year:

The rebound in 2025 has been nothing short of miraculous given that the first quarter was down a full 12 percent versus 2024 and the full month of March was down 46.1 percent versus March of 2024. And even in early July, revenue was running 16 percent ahead year-over-year.

It’s yet to be seen what the results will be for the rest of the year, with big releases in the fall and winter like The Conjuring: Last Rites, Tron: Ares, Wicked: For Good, and Avatar: Fire and Ash.