After the pandemic and strikes, there was as much to feel optimistic about throughout 2025’s year in film as there were points of concern.
Luminate Intelligence’s latest report, State of Film Industry 2026, examines the past year as well as what’s to come through extensive data spanning the film market, providing a basis of information and business-minded perspective to better inform industry professionals who seek to make the most sense of this transitional era.
Animated movies continued to one-up their own baseline, as Zootopia 2 resonated toward the end of the year and has since toppled Inside Out 2 as the best animated film ever in the West.
Warner Bros. defied expectations by releasing IP-driven and original hits in quick succession after kicking off the year with flops, while Netflix achieved record viewership on its own end with films including KPop Demon Hunters and Happy Gilmore 2, the former playing in theaters after it first launched on streaming.
But 2025 ended with Netflix entering into a deal to acquire Warner Bros., which Paramount is now challenging after losing out
on its own bid mere months after the studio and its parent were acquired in full by Skydance.
Even with notable successes for the likes of original films Sinners and Weapons, the macro picture for theatrical exhibition is still frictional, as audience selectivity in the streaming era continues to hinder consistent turnout. Though production timelines stabilized after diminished studio slates in 2024, the 2025 domestic box office finished at just over $9 billion, hardly an improvement from $8.8 billion a year earlier, when there were fewer big movies in theaters.
Netflix hasn’t outright said it intends to remove Warner Bros. films from theaters should its deal go through, and it will experiment with theaters again this year when Narnia does the IMAX circuit in November. Still, the box office is unlikely to reach its pre-pandemic highs or even surpass 2023’s post-pandemic high of $9.1 billion again without Warners films getting full theatrical runs.
As in the best screenplays, the stakes are high.
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