Warner Brothers Breaks Opening Weekend Records! My Thoughts!
2025 has been quite the year for WB. With the release of Weapons, WB broke a record involving movie’s opening weekends. So let’s talk about it!
What Record Was Broken?: This is an interesting record because it’s one that I’m surprised hasn’t already been broken. The record is that WB became the first studio ever to have six consecutive films make $40 million+ in their domestic opening weekend. Those six movies include A Minecraft Movie ($162 million), Sinners ($48 million), Final Destination: Bloodlines ($52 million), F1 ($57 million), Superman ($125 million), and Weapons ($43 million).
My Thoughts: That's pretty crazy and very exciting for Warner Brothers because they have had a pretty weird couple of years. Of course, WB had all sorts of drama with DC and the DCEU not being managed well. When they killed the DCEU all of their 2023 movies flopped at the box office. For lack of a better word 2025 was their comeback year. It’s exciting to see them have six movies come out and all of them being profitable and having big openings. But beyond that, there’s a lot of interesting stuff to unpack here about what some of these records mean.
- Half Are Original Films: This fact right here is probably what gets me the most excited about this record being broken. 3/6 of these films are original IP films. I’ve seen some people debate whether or not F1 is actually an original film given that it uses the Formula 1 brand. I think it’s an original film and I’ve never doubted it being an original film. You also have Sinners and Weapons that are original horror films that made over $40 million in their opening weekends. Sinners broke records back in April of being the biggest original film of the decade and the biggest original film opening since US in 2019. That was just an exciting record that Sinners broke because it was a great movie and we were all thrilled that it opened as high as it did. F1 comes out in the middle of the summer and just kills it. It has become Brad Pitt’s highest grossing film beating out World War Z. More recently it became the highest grossing sports movie of all time. It’s this film that had a great opening, has had great legs because the word of mouth is so good, and it’s broken records for both its lead actor and its genre. Weapons is the most recent release and that one makes over $40 million. There’s a lot of excitement from Sinners’ opening weekend that translates to Weapons. 2025 has given us two original horror movies to have opened to $40 million. I loved Weapons, it’s probably my favorite movie of 2025 so far. What I love about these records it’s that they prove to Hollywood that we want original films. There’s been a lot of conversation lately about Hollywood only doing sequels, reboots, and remakes and how they’re out of ideas. There’s several films that fall into those categories that have been released in 2025 that are big hits. But the fact that three original films from one studio opened to at least $40 million is pretty incredible. I hope these numbers show Hollywood that we want original movies. Give great directors a big budget to tell an original story. I think the movie industry and the movie slate is more interesting when you have great blockbusters while also having great original films.
- Half Are Horror Films: The other part that’s very interesting is that half of these are horror films. Every year we have horror films that are hits and make money. This is actually the first year where three horror movies have made $40 million+ in its opening weekend. Most years there’s at least one movie that opens that big, 2025 has three. Sinners and Final Destination: Bloodlines have ended their theatrical runners, Sinners at $365 million and Bloodlines at $285 million. Weapons hasn’t been out a week yet, but it’s already made $91 million. By the end of this weekend it’ll have passed $100 million worldwide and it’ll already be profitable. The film is looking to have a $25 million second weekend which will mean about a 40% second drop which for a horror film is pretty fantastic. There’s not a lot of horror films that drop that low, most of them have 60%-70% drops. Given Weapons’ fantastic word of mouth, it’ll have good legs in August and September. I think its theatrical run will be around $250 million which is a great number for that type of film. The fact that ⅔ of the horror films are IP films. In a couple weeks we’re getting The Conjuring: Last Rites which is tracking for a $30 million. The Conjuring is a very well known and established horror franchise and both Sinners and Weapons are likely opening higher. That’s crazy and it’s good to see because Sinners and Weapons are both great films, and will both be in my top 10 of the year. But I’m very curious about what this means about the future of horror. I wouldn’t be surprised if we get more original horror films. Going back to what I said earlier, the more original films we have in Hollywood the better. I think it makes the filmmakers and the audiences happy.
- A Minecraft Movie and Superman: A Minecraft Movie was a lot of fun and Superman is one of my favorite movies of the year. Both of them broke records in their own regards, A Minecraft Movie was the biggest opening ever for a video game movie. Superman is looking to be the highest grossing comic book movie of the year. Which is the first time that DC will take that title since 2008 with The Dark Knight. Both of them have broken records in their own regards. I don’t think that their records are as exciting or flashy as the other four films that I mentioned. Since they were a part of the record breaking, I did want to talk about them here. Superman is doing good at the box office, it’s not crushing it. Superman will cross $600 million this weekend so it’s a hit, but I don’t think it’s quite the hit that WB was hoping for. It’s a good kick off to the new DCU, but it’s not a fantastic kick off. The film is doing great domestically, internationally it’s not flopping it’s just not doing as good. If the international numbers were as good or better then it already made $700 million, maybe somewhere between $750-$800 million. A Minecraft Movie was this big event film and it made almost $1 billion, which is crazy and very unexpected. Maybe this is a blog post for a different day but I wonder if video game adaptations are going to surpass comic book movies as the most popular movie genre. I wouldn’t be surprised if A Minecraft Movie 2 gets announced because this film made almost $1 billion and it’s the 2nd highest grossing video game adaption of all time.
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