The highest grossing film of 2025 so far is not a remake, sequel or prequel — a sudden break from the franchise trend that’s dominated the box office for more than a decade.
“The Minecraft Movie,” which is based on the “Minecraft” video game but tells an original story, has raked in more than $355 million in domestic ticket sales and more than $720 million worldwide, per Box Office Mojo.
It is currently the highest earning film of 2025, knocking out the Marvel sequel, “Captain America: Brave New World” and the Disney live-action remake, “Mufasa: The Lion King.”
Young audiences, in particular, have expressed a rowdy enthusiasm for the film, prompting theaters around the country to put out warnings asking audiences to dial back viral riotous behaviors linked to “The Minecraft Movie.”
While much of the rowdiness is unwanted, the enthusiasm is encouraging.
“(‘The Minecraft Movie’ is) a real hit in the center of the bullseye,” Warner Bros. global distribution chief Jeff Goldstein told Variety. “This is something the industry needed like air.”
Goldstein added, “It’s no question that one movie can change the trajectory of the marketplace.”
On the heels of “The Minecraft Movie’s” box office success came “Sinners” — which offered more promising results for original content.
“Sinners,” an original horror movie from Ryan Coogler, debuted over the weekend at $48 million — the largest debut for an original movie since 2019, according to Variety.
It has now grossed $71 million at the domestic box office, making it the seventh-highest earning film of the year so far, per Box Office Mojo.
Still, the top 10 highest-earning movies of the year list is dominated by franchise films. “Sonic the Hedgehog 3,” “Snow White,” “Mufasa: The Lion King” and “Captain America: Brave New World” are among some of the highest-earning films of the year.
But recent success from “The Minecraft Movie” and “Sinners” might hint at a comeback for original movies.
“The domestic box office has been asleep in 2025, and this is an overdue wakeup,” David A. Gross, who runs the FranchiseRe movie consulting firm, told Variety.
But a wakeup might not be enough. “What the box office needs is consistency,” Gross added.
Studios are making original movies
In 2024, nine of the top 10 highest-earning films of the year fell under the sequel genre, as previously reported by the Deseret News.
This isn’t a new trend. In eight of the last 10 years (2015-2024) the highest-grossing film of the year was a franchise film, per Box Office Mojo.
“Recently the industry has seen a solid string of success born out of rebooting or upgrading content from the past. This is a risk-averse strategy. You bank on content where people already have a sense of the characters, they have a sense of what the plot is, what the story is,” said Walt Hickey, a pop culture expert at FiveThirtyEight, per ABC News.
But the trend is not because Hollywood doesn’t have original ideas. Audiences are just more interested in franchise content. Original movies released in 2024, such as “The Fall Guy,” “Challengers,” “Conclave,” “Thelma” and “Fly Me to the Moon” performed dismally compared to franchise films.
“It’s really hard out there for an original movie,” director Christopher Landon, who recently released the original thriller “Drop,” told The Wall Street Journal.
Putting out an original movie can be risky for movie studios. Franchise films are dependable in terms of selling tickets — and audiences are spending their money on sequels, prequels and spinoffs.
“Studios are inherently risk-averse, because they spend hundreds of millions of dollars on films with no guarantee that they’ll recoup their losses,” writes Forbes. “It’s easy to see why sequels and reboots are so appealing — they come with a built-in ticket-buying fan base, and are proven to be profitable. Moviegoers might grouse about the lack of original programming, but so long as they keep buying tickets, studios will keep making sequels.”