UPDATE: 2025-05-30 08:03 EST BY BRENNAN KLEIN
Jurassic World Rebirth Also Surges Past The Weekend’s New Releases As IKWYDLS Lands At The Bottom Of Saturday’s $13-14M Projections
This article was originally written Saturday AM and has been updated Sunday AM with up-to-date box office projections (in bold), a full chart, and further analysis.
Supermanis dominating a crowded domestic box office field. Throughout July so far, there has only been one major wide release per weekend, withJurassic World Rebirthkicking off the month and James Gunn’sSupermandebuting on July 11. However, this is not the case for the weekend of July 18, which occupies a lull between superhero movie releases.
Ahead of the impending debut of Marvel’sThe Fantastic Four: First Stepson July 25,three major releases are jockeying for attentionin the interim. These titles are the Ari Aster satirical COVID WesternEddington, theslasher legacy sequelI Know What You Did Last Summer, and the family franchise installmentSmurfs.
PerDeadline, as of Sunday morning,Supermanis projected to take No. 1 at the domestic box office for the second weekend in a row with a 3-day sophomore weekend haul of$57.2 million. This gives it a cumulative haul that sees it becoming justthe seventh movie of 2025 to pass the $200 million domestic milestone.
Superman’s weekend 2 drop of 54% is alsothe best for the superhero genre so far in 2025, beating Marvel’sThunderbolts*(-56%) andCaptain America: Brave New World(-68%).
Meanwhile,the new releases are failing to competeanywhere near that level.Smurfsis projected to debut with $12 million.I Know What You Did Last Summeris only poised to come in slightly higher, scraping together a 3-day debut of$13 million, whileEddingtonis set to open outside the Top 5 entirely, landing at No. 7 with just$4.25 million.
The new releases' debuts are underwhelming enough thatthey have also slipped below the third weekend ofJurassic World Rebirth. The Scarlett Johansson-led standalone sequel maintained its position at No. 2 for the second weekend in a row. See the full domestic Top 5 chart for the weekend below:
1
$57.2 million
$235 million (weekend 2)
2
$23.4 million
$276.1 million (weekend 3)
3
$13 million
$13 million (weekend 1)
4
$12 million
$12 million (weekend 1)
5
$9.6 million
$153.6 million (weekend 4)
Even though the new releases aren’t performing at a particularly impressive level, the fact that bothI Know What You Did Last SummerandSmurfsfound places in the Top 5 means thattwo titles from last weekend have been pushed out.
Pixar’sElio, which was formerly at No. 5, fell all the way down to No. 8 with a week-on-week drop of 49%. Meanwhile, the live-actionHow to Train Your Dragonremake, which was at No. 4 last weekend, has only fallen two spots,hitting No. 6 with a projected $5.35 million totalat a nice and easy 32% drop.
What This Means For The Weekend’s New Releases
None Of Them Are On Particularly Solid Footing
Because2025’sI Know What You Did Last Summeronly has a reported budget of $18 million,the movie is likely on track to turn a profitby the end of its theatrical run. However, this opening weekend is still a bad sign for the four-film horror franchise.
It will be coming in below the debut weekends of both previous installments in the franchise that received theatrical releases. The franchise’s previous low was the original 1997 movie, which had a 3-day debut of $15.8 million. While it exceeds the legacy sequel’s debut even in the raw numbers,when adjusted for inflation that total comes to roughly $31.5 million.
Below, see a breakdown of the box office performance of theI Know What You Did Last Summermovies:
$15.8 million
$125.2 million
$16.5 million
$40 million
However, the outlook is even more dour forSmurfsandEddington, which have even more ground to cover. In addition to opening belowI Know What You Did Last Summer,both movies have considerably higher price tags. The family outing comes with a reported budget of $58 million, while theAri Aster moviereportedly cost $25 million.
WhileSmurfscould have long legs in theaters, as do many family movies,it could also make up for any deficit with merchandising.Eddington’s prospects are more opaque, however.
It has at leastexceeded any individual weekend of Ari Aster’s previous movie, 2023’sBeau is Afraid, which grossed $12.3 million against a reported $35 million budget. However, even if it earns double the gross ofBeau, it will just barely make its budget back, let alone hit its estimated break-even point, which could be as high as $62.5 million.
Our Take On The Weekend Box Office
July Needs To Wait For Another Blockbuster
The fact that the weekend’s three new releases premiered between the debuts of two superhero tentpoles means thatstudios and distributors most likely never expected any of them to be major summer blockbusters. However, these unimpressive opening weekends mean that theupcomingFantastic Four: First Stepscould sweep them almost entirely off the board when it debuts.
While July will be propped up byFantastic Four,Jurassic World Rebirth, andSuperman, the new releases join an unfortunate roster of mid-level summer 2025 debuts that have made less of an impression on audiences than they probably should have, which is a list that includesKarate Kid: Legends,Ballerina,Elio, andM3GAN 2.0.
