One of the final film releases of 2025 also serves as the year's most potent test of whether this period of time has seen lower box office results for movies across the board, or whether concerns of the 2025 "curse" are more reflective of current attitudes towards certain genres and films for cinema-goers. 2025 has seen many major genres and franchises exist in a state of flux, encouraging conversations about whether this reflects changing trends for the world of cinema itself.
While the box office success of movies like the live-action Lilo & Stitch and the animated Ne Zha 2 have established that 2025 is still capable of film hits that garner over $1 billion, the year has also seen several movies that garnered substantial critical praise and pop culture significance finding themselves with lower results, leading to theories that they perhaps could have enjoyed different earnings in other times. However, one big upcoming movie will put this idea to the test in a big way.
Avatar: Fire And Ash Is The Biggest Test Of 2025's Box Office Landscape
Stephen Lang looking thoughtful as Quaritch in Avatar Fire and Ash
While 2025 is heading into its final months, this doesn't mean the year's chances of more box office hits are over by any margin. Though other films like Zootopia 2 stand a good chance of landing in the year's highest-grossing results, Avatar: Fire And Ash offers a uniquely promising challenge for 2025 when it releases on December 19, as a result of just how staggeringly well the series has fared thus far.
Of course, the first Avatar is currently the highest grossing movie of all time thanks to its $2.9 billion results – establishing there has been plenty of interest in the franchise since day one. While it initially seemed uncertain whether the sequel would be able to come close to the original's results, Avatar: The Way of The Water garnered its own $2.3 billion gross, making it the third highest-grossing movie to date.
With Avatar: Fire and Ash's trailers and teasers netting tens of millions of views, it's evident interest in the franchise and the stories the series has yet to tell is still there. However, as we've seen with many movies so far this year, audience interest hasn't always translated into the same level of financial success that previously seemed inevitable for major movie franchises like the MCU.
That said, the repeated success of the Avatar series means that – unless the third film somehow doesn't hold up in terms of its story or visual spectacle – any lower results for Avatar: Fire And Ash would appear to cement that the lower results several movies have faced in 2025 have been due to wider circumstances around cinema-going in this period more broadly, and thus would be less reflective of attitudes towards individual genres or movies themselves.
Avatar: Fire And Ash's Box Office Will Help Put 2025's Movie Results In Context
Closeup of Kiri (Sigourney Weaver) in Avatar: Fire & Ash
While several movies that were hits in terms of their critical reception have drawn a lower box office gross than some predictions estimated, the overall financial results from 2025 do mirror previous years in many regards. 2025 only had two films break the $1 billion mark in terms of their worldwide box office, but the same was also true for 2023, and 2022 had no films break this milestone – though it can also be argued 2022 and 2023 were more affected by the pandemic and its subsequent impacts on the world of cinema.
As such, Avatar: Fire and Ash is an interesting litmus test of sorts, both in terms of seeing whether this period of time is capable of reaching the heights we've seen with previous installments in the Avatar series, and in terms of seeing whether the year's results are seemingly more affected financially across the board, or if certain releases are seemingly having the same level of success as they would have if they'd released in different years.
