The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | August 22 – 24, 2025
Week 34 | August 22 – 24, 2025
1. Weapons
Warner Bros. | Week 3
Weekend Range: $12M – $15M
Showtime Marketshare: 12%
Pros
- Weapons has been doing everything WB could have hoped for and more, taking #1 for a second time at $24.45M (down from $25M Sunday estimate) for a $91.26M domestic total and $154.96M globally. Director Zach Creggor is already teasing prequel possibilities alongside early Oscar buzz for co-star Amy Madigan (she was previously nominated in 1986 for Twice in a Lifetime). It picked the perfect date to breakout and hold on to some premium screens, and we believe it will become the fourth film in 2025 to score three consecutive weekends at #1 (Captain America Brave New World, Sinners, and Lilo & Stitch being the other three). A third time in the top spot this frame is all-but-assured with another under-50% drop.
Cons
- There’s very little to jeer about with Weapons, an original genre movie generating positive critical and audience buzz… not to mention profit! Sadly, this weekend will rival the February 28-March 2, March 7-9, and March 14-16 frames as the lowest of the year. All those weekends finished between $52-$55M, which is where we expect this one to fall. That won’t reflect the true numbers this frame, as we hear from exhibitors that the theatrical bow of KPop Demon Hunters as a one-weekend sing-along event is selling particularly well, but being a Netlfix release those figures will not be made available to the press. Based on our sources, KPop Demon Hunters could potentially open to $4M+ this weekend, which could have ranked it among the top three films of this frame.
2. Freakier Friday
Walt Disney Pictures | Week 3
Weekend Range: $7M – $9M
Showtime Marketshare: 10%
Pros
- With a modest -50% drop in Frame 2, Disney’s long-gap sequel Freakier Friday earned $14.28M this past weekend for a $55.98M domestic total with $87.6M globally. There’s no question the movie will prove profitable for Disney (especially downstream), even though it won’t make as much as its 2003 predecessor Freaky Friday ($160.8M WW). Opening at #2 was a disappointment for this title, but holding #2 for three weeks is arguably a triumph, especially for a comedy with two older female leads in Jamie Lee Curtis and Lindsay Lohan.
Cons
- It says a lot that the studio couldn’t quite read the zeitgeist with this one, especially when you have an original streaming product like Sony/Netflix’s KPop Demon Hunters actually making cultural waves among the same female target demo as Freakier Friday. Dragging out the fifth screen version of the same story since 1976 clearly wasn’t a recipe for freshness, which is what audiences have shown they are craving. In 2024 there were only two films in the Top 20 that fit outside the sequel/prequel/remake/spin-off paradigm (It Ends With Us and The Wild Robot), while 2025 so far has six (A Minecraft Movie, Sinners, F1, Weapons, Elio, and The King of Kings).
3. The Fantastic Four: First Steps
Walt Disney Pictures | Week 5
Weekend Range: $4M – $6M
Showtime Marketshare: 8%
Pros
- The Fantastic Four: First Steps placed #4 during its fourth frame to bring in $9M for the weekend, taking its domestic total to a current $248.18M. The closest domestic performer for Marvel Studios would be Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($259.7M total), which during its own fifth frame in May 2014 brought in $7.7M for a $237.15M point-in-time total. The fact that FF’s closest superhero tentpole competition, Superman, is now widely available on Digital gives this MCU entry an extra edge going into Frame 5 that will help it scooch up a notch to third.
Cons
- At $470.39M WW, the new Fantastic Four is still in the bottom tier of MCU global performers, having not yet passed Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($476M) while heading for parity with or under the first Ant-Man ($518.85M). This is the same problem that plagued the recent Superman, which also underperformed overseas.
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