Five films have already grossed more than $1bn at the global box office; three more have exceeded $500m. analysts predict that the global box office will take $35bn this year, up 7% from 2025 Although overall ticket sales are still down from pre-covid levels. IT HAS BEEN an action-packed year on cinema screens—and at the ticket counter.
Forthcoming blockbusters such as “Avengers: Doomsday” and “Dune: Part Three” promise epic showdowns; crowds are sure to show up to cinemas to watch the battles unfold.
Market Context
Young cinema-goers are propelling films to success. It is not just superheroes that get youngsters super excited. The trend isn’t confined to the West, either. What explains this surge? Partly, cinema is being boosted by the technology some thought might kill it: social media. Online communities generate buzz—nearly half of European youngsters say they discover new films on TikTok. Viral trends coalesce around certain titles.
Almost two-thirds of its opening-weekend audience were 18- to 34-year-olds. The film has now made more than $1.6bn at cinemas worldwide. In Saudi Arabia two-thirds of cinema-goers are under 34; in Vietnam as many as 90% are.
“ Spider-Man: Brand New Day ”, released on July 31st, set an opening-weekend record in North America, taking $360m to edge past “Avengers: Endgame” (2019), another superhero flick and the previous record holder. Many made a pilgrimage to see Sir Christopher Nolan’s retelling of “ The Odyssey ”. Recent films such as “ The Drama ” (a dark romantic comedy), “Project Hail Mary” (a sci-fi yarn) and “ Wuthering Heights ” (a racy adaptation of a Victorian novel) have seen a similar skew. Gen Z’s fixation on “ Obsession ”, a horror film made by a 26-year-old, propelled it to $490m at the global box office—more than 650 times its budget. Under-30s make up more than half of the Hindi box office in India, according to Ormax Media, a consultancy. Last summer young Japanese flocked to “ Demon Slayer : Infinity Castle”, an anime blockbuster, helping give it the best opening weekend in the country’s history. For instance, “Minions: The Rise of Gru” in 2022, attracted hordes of young men in suits, who called themselves “GentleMinions”. During screenings of “ A Minecraft Movie ” in 2025, people screamed and jumped out of their seats.
Performance and Data
A generation that revels in nostalgia is embracing an analogue pleasure. For many, the big screen offers a reprieve from endlessly scrolling the little one. Young people, it turns out, are eager to go along for the ride.
Letterboxd, an app which lets users log which films they’ve seen and share reviews, now has 30m users worldwide, almost three times the number in 2023, and its most active users are aged between 18 and 24.
Social media also create fomo (“fear of missing out”). “The culture around films has become a youth culture again,” says Stephen Follows, a film-data analyst. Susan Sontag , an American writer, once described the thrills of being “kidnapped by the movie” and, “to be kidnapped, you have to be in a movie theatre, seated in the dark among anonymous strangers”.
