Disney had an incredible summer at the box office, but they lost to one of their biggest rivals in a less-obvious but very important way. The most exciting movies of summer 2025 produced a plethora of exciting projects. Comedies, superhero actioners, and horror movies all had their place this season, settling into a decent if somewhat underwhelming box office result.

ᴅᴇᴀᴅline reports that this summer’s box office came in at a similar figure to 2024, with total domestic earnings of $3.67 billion. A huge proportion of that gross went to Disney’s 2025 movies, with Lilo & Sтιтch’s $423.3 million domestic total contributing to the studio’s $1.02 billion. This was a strong result, but not as strong as Disney had hoped.

Going to the cinema is growing more expensive, and so is moviemaking. The 2025 box office has revealed some difficult truths about audiences and their interests, which Disney will need to put significant focus on addressing in the near future. With all of that in mind, another giant studio, not Disney, was the real winner of this summer.

Warner Bros. Is The Real Winner Of The Summer Movie Season

Warner Bros. may have made less than Disney did this summer, with only $980.4 million landing them in the number 2 slot, but this was a stellar performance for the studio. Last year, Warner Bros. struggled, with films like Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga and Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1 bringing down their performance significantly.

Movies like Superman soared at the 2025 box office, drawing not only decent sums but also cultural attention. Other films like F1: The Movie, which was made with Apple TV+, were also strong draws, bringing excellent diversity to the box office with a strong, well-performing original slate made for adults and children alike.

Conversely, Disney went from an incredible 2024 to a decent 2025. Inside Out 2 was the biggest animated hit of last year, but Pixar’s 2025 offering Elio was a box office bomb.

Marvel Cinematic Universe movies like The Fantastic Four: First Steps and Thunderbolts* were well reviewed, but audiences did not seem to be interested, with the latter grossing only $190.2 million domestically. First Steps did slightly better, with $266.1 million.

Disney’s performance this summer feels like a harbinger of bad things to come. ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool & Wolverine was a huge hit last year, but summer 2025 showed that it did not entirely revitalize audience perception for the Marvel brand. The season saw a drop for Disney, which earned $1.28 billion domestically last year from just Inside Out 2 and ᴅᴇᴀᴅpool.

All is not at all doom and gloom for Disney, but these are some concerning signs for the popular studio. General audiences have responded better to the offerings from Warner Bros. this year, with more conversation and cultural capital going to films like Weapons and Sinners than virtually any of Disney’s releases.

Lilo & Sтιтch was a huge hit, but the formulas Disney has been using are not bulletproof, as could be seen from the failures earlier this year of Captain America: Brave New World and Snow White. Things look great for the future of Warner Bros. now, but Disney certainly has the opportunity to get back on the right path.