The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | June 20 – June 22, 2025
Week 25 | June 20 – June 22, 2025
1. How to Train Your Dragon
Universal Pictures | Week 2
Weekend Range: $40M – $48M
Showtime Marketshare: 19%
Pros
- Universal’s How to Train Your Dragon rekindling did a terrific job of stoking the box office fires this weekend, where it earned $84.6M (up nearly a million from Sunday estimates) to become one of the best domestic openings ever for a live-action remake of an animated film. The total is now up to $93.16M, which means it will hit $100M stateside before this coming weekend. As we’ve said before, this opens the door to Shrek, Trolls, Kung Fu Panda, and any other DreamWorks properties getting an IRL polish, as well as other non-Disney animated franchises, ala Hotel Transylvania, Ne Zha, etc. In other words, this IP trend is in no danger of slowing down, even as the Disney Vault has nearly been emptied out already.
Cons
- Our prediction panel sees How to Train Your Dragon maintaining its perch atop the mountain this frame. 28 Years Later has a small window to overtake the dragon for the top spot at the box office, plus Elio could always over-index and siphon the pint-sized audience. Dragon does not have the same personal space Lilo & Stitch got for three weeks without any real competition. It has the advantage of excellent word-of-mouth, following its “A” CinemaScore, which should translate to strong second-weekend business, regardless of outside factors. IMAX business is solid but not as spectacular as was clearly hoped for.
2. 28 Years Later
Sony Pictures | NEW
Weekend Range: $35M – $45M
Showtime Marketshare: 15%
Pros
- In 2002 director Danny Boyle’s 28 Days Later (alongside the first Resident Evil) managed to revitalize the zombie sub-genre so dramatically that the cannibalistic nasties have practically become their own cinematic food group. It also announced Oppenheimer star Cillian Murphy to the world. Now the Oscar-winning Slumdog Millionaire filmmaker returns with a new installment with marquee names (Jodie Comer, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Ralph Fiennes) and a budget much more substantial than the first one’s $8M. We’ve seen this title’s ticket sales surging recently, thanks in no small part to a campaign kicked off by the eerily effective/Golden Trailer-winning preview released in December (27M views on YouTube alone). Sony is so high on it they already have sequel 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple in the can for early next year, directed by Candyman‘s Nia DaCosta.
Cons
- Even though critics reacted positively to screening 28 minutes of footage from 28 Years Later, reviews are being embargoed until opening day—never a good sign. Fans may be disappointed that Cillian Murphy will only return prominently in Bone Temple, not this one. While 28 Days was a sleeper hit ($82.78M WW), in the ensuing two decades the zombie genre has been run in and out and back into the ground several times over. Horror fans get their walker fix on the tube with shows like The Last of Us and the myriad spin-offs of Walking Dead, while even Disney has their tween-friendly/G-rated Zombies franchise. The last big-budget zombie duology was Zack Snyder’s Army of the Dead/Army of Thieves for Netflix, which was received with, let’s say, muted enthusiasm. Even the original sequel, 2007’s 28 Weeks Later starring Rose Byrne and Jeremy Renner, saw a significant downturn in box office ($64.2M) even with pumped-up budget and effects.
3. Elio
Disney/Pixar | NEW
Weekend Range: $20M – $30M
Showtime Marketshare: 17%
Pros
- Although the space-based animated sci-fi comedy Elio has been struggling to find traction as an original story (What’s the high concept here? Is it a sequel to Luca? Why does the kid have an eyepatch?), the Pixar brand is coming off its biggest hit ever with last summer’s Inside Out 2 ($1.69B). Reviews are currently at a solid 84% on RT, with critics appearing to like the film even if its not the total home run we all expect from a gold standard animation house like Pixar. Although the family market is crowded right now, Elio could be the right movie at the right time for all the smaller kids turned off by How to Train Your Dragon who have probably already seen Lilo & Stitch by now. One could argue that Elio might be the most word-of-mouth dependent studio release of summer 2025, but all the ingredients are there for it to leg it out until Sony’s Smurfs a month from now.
Cons
- Is there any way to sugarcoat what could very well become the lowest-opening theatrical feature in Pixar’s 30-year history? Despite advanced tickets being on sale since May 27, Elio is looking down the well at a very weak debut under $30M, which would put it in the same ballpark as the first Toy Story from 1995 (unadjusted $29.1M) and 2023’s weak-starter Elemental ($29.6M). The studio hopes to emulate the steady performance of the latter, which maintained extremely low percentage drops between -9% and -39% over the ensuing six weeks, eventually grossing a respectable $154.4M domestically and $484.8 M worldwide. Even though it managed to save face, that performance still puts Elemental on the lower-rung of Pixar, a studio increasingly reliant on sequels (Toy Story 5, Incredibles 3, Coco 2) to keep the coffers full where originals like Elio used to be their bread and butter.
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