Top 10 Highest Grossing Films of 2025 as of January 2026

The global box office has always been cinema’s ultimate report card. It doesn’t just tell us what people watched – it tells us what audiences cared about, what stories moved them, and which studios played the smartest game. In many ways, a film’s box office performance is a cultural snapshot, a rolling referendum on taste, nostalgia, franchise loyalty, and the pure desire to sit in a dark room and feel something enormous.

2025 was a fascinating year for cinema. Sequels dominated, but not in the predictable Hollywood-franchise way we’ve come to expect. Animation had a once-in-a-generation moment. An international animated film rewrote the record books. And a live-action dragon movie quietly flew past expectations. The numbers are in, and some of them are genuinely jaw-dropping. Let’s dive in.

#10 – Superman (2026) – ~$616 Million Worldwide

After years of DC misfires and audience skepticism, James Gunn’s reboot of the Man of Steel arrived with serious buzz. After a string of box office flops, DC Studios kicked off a new era with Gunn’s Superman, a film that reboots the character as part of a new DC Cinematic Universe, setting up a decade’s worth of stories in the process. Honestly, the pressure on this one was immense. A bad opening would have likely killed the entire Gunn-era DC experiment before it had a chance to breathe.

After rave reviews, Superman went on to earn $616 million at the worldwide box office. With its release, the Superman franchise surpassed $3 billion in total franchise earnings. The film’s performance was considered a genuine success, particularly given how cautiously audiences had approached DC films in recent years. It’s a foundation, not a ceiling.

#9 – F1: The Movie – ~$632 Million Worldwide

Brad Pitt and Damson Idris led this high-octane drama, immersing audiences in the adrenaline-fueled world of elite motorsport. Formula One has grown into a global cultural phenomenon over the past decade, largely thanks to the Drive to Survive documentary series on Netflix. This film leaned into that existing fanbase hard – and it worked brilliantly.

Unlike other top films, F1 was an original story, earning $190 million in North America and $442 million internationally, making it Apple Studios’ biggest theatrical hit. Apple’s F1 roared with roughly 70% of its total haul coming from offshore markets, proving that motorsport passion is genuinely borderless. Think of it like Top Gun: Maverick for racing fans – it had that same visceral, “you need to see this on the biggest screen possible” energy.

#8 – How to Train Your Dragon (Live-Action) – ~$636 Million Worldwide

How to Train Your Dragon follows an ancient threat that endangers both Vikings and dragons alike on the isle of Berk, with the friendship between Hiccup and Toothless becoming the key to forging a new future together. The film earned a domestic haul of $262.9 million alongside $371.8 million internationally for a total of around $634.8 million. Adapting a beloved animated trilogy into live-action is always a high-risk gamble, yet director Dean DeBlois clearly knew this world well enough to make it sing.

Universal returned to How to Train Your Dragon, with roughly 58.7% of its gross coming from overseas markets. The international appeal of the original animated trilogy, spanning children who grew up with it across the globe, translated beautifully into theatrical ticket sales. There is something almost poetic about seeing Toothless reimagined in live-action on a massive IMAX screen.

#7 – Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – Infinity Castle – ~$780 Million Worldwide

Infinity Castle is the first in a planned trilogy of Demon Slayer films to follow up on the story of the anime series. After debuting to universal acclaim, Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle went on to become one of 2025’s biggest surprise hits, with a worldwide haul of just under $780 million. Let’s be real – nobody predicted an anime film would crack the global top ten. Nobody outside of the fan community, at least.

Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle grossed about $780 million worldwide to become the highest-grossing Japanese film of all time, surpassing its predecessor Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Mugen Train, and worldwide it became the highest-grossing anime film of all time. In the US, its $70 million opening weekend was the biggest opening for an international film, and it went on to set US records for the highest-grossing anime film, surpassing Pokémon: The First Movie, and the first anime film to cross $100 million domestically. The anime generation has officially arrived at the box office.

#6 – Jurassic World: Rebirth – ~$869 Million Worldwide

Universal and Amblin’s Jurassic World Rebirth launched with a monster $318.3 million global opening, making it the biggest worldwide opening of the year for a studio film at that point. Directed by Gareth Edwards, the film brought a fresh tone to a franchise that was starting to feel creaky after Dominion. Scarlett Johansson led the cast in a refreshingly stripped-back adventure that felt closer in spirit to the 1993 original – lean, thrilling, and driven by genuine tension.

Universal’s Jurassic World: Rebirth ultimately grossed $869 million. While it still received a big budget, its price tag was significantly smaller than that of Dominion, which reportedly cost roughly $260 million, meaning the film’s financial returns were actually impressive on a relative profitability basis. It’s a good reminder that sometimes you can do more with less.

#5 – A Minecraft Movie – ~$958 Million Worldwide

Video game adaptations have had a historically troubled relationship with Hollywood, so A Minecraft Movie deserves genuine recognition for pulling this off. The beloved sandbox game made the leap to the big screen and mined box office gold, with a quirky sense of humor, family-friendly adventure, and stunning visuals hitting the sweet spot for gamers and newcomers alike. The film seemed to understand that Minecraft’s appeal is less about story and more about a feeling – creativity, chaos, and the joy of building something.

A Minecraft Movie earned about $956 million around the world. The film highlights the growing international appeal of video game adaptations alongside anime, a trend that is rapidly reshaping what kinds of intellectual property can sustain global box office success. Zootopia 2 officially passed A Minecraft Movie to become the highest-grossing domestic release of 2025, reaching $424.2 million in North American ticket sales to Minecraft’s $424.08 million – a photo finish that made box office trackers genuinely breathless.

#4 – Lilo & Stitch – ~$1.03 Billion Worldwide

Disney’s live-action remakes have a complicated reputation, to put it mildly. Yet Lilo & Stitch proved that the right source material, handled with heart, can still command massive audiences. Lilo & Stitch became the 58th film overall and the first MPA film of 2025 to gross $1 billion worldwide. That milestone matters. It was the Hollywood production that first punched through the billion-dollar ceiling in 2025.

The film set the record for the biggest opening weekend for a live-action animated film, surpassing Detective Pikachu, and became the highest-grossing live-action animated film, surpassing The Smurfs (2011), as well as the first live-action animated film to globally gross at least $1 billion. Lilo & Stitch seems to have changed the trajectory for Disney’s live-action remake program, with the film’s massive success leading Disney to greenlight a sequel expected to adapt the events of Lilo & Stitch 2: Stitch Has a Glitch. Ohana means family, and apparently family means nobody stays below a billion dollars.

#3 – Avatar: Fire and Ash – ~$1.1–1.32 Billion Worldwide

Avatar: Fire and Ash, directed by James Cameron and released in December, became the tenth fastest film to cross the $1 billion milestone at the worldwide box office. Released late in the year as a holiday blockbuster, Fire and Ash had the unique advantage of arriving in theaters during peak family moviegoing season – and with the full weight of one of cinema’s most iconic franchises behind it.

Avatar: Fire and Ash became the 60th film overall to gross $1 billion worldwide, and the Avatar film series surpassed $6 billion in total franchise earnings with its release. It managed to earn a spot in the global top three grossers of 2025 with its roughly $1.1 billion global collection. It’s hard to say for sure whether Fire and Ash captured the cultural conversation the way the first Avatar did, but the numbers speak for themselves. Pandora still sells tickets.

#2 – Zootopia 2 – ~$1.85 Billion Worldwide

With positive reviews, audiences flocked to the cinema, allowing Zootopia 2 to become the second-highest-grossing film of the year and the seventh-biggest animated film of all time, well surpassing the original. This sequel arrived nearly a decade after the original, and the anticipation for it was clearly enormous. The film earned over $650 million in China, surpassing Avengers: Endgame to become the highest-grossing Western film in Chinese box office history, helped in part by Disney’s Zootopia-themed land at Shanghai Disneyland, which kept the characters in the cultural conversation for years.

The acclaimed animated sequel reached $424 million in domestic grosses and $1.85 billion globally, standing as the highest-grossing Hollywood animated release ever. Zootopia 2 holds a 91% critics score and a 96% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes, earning both Certified Fresh and Verified Hot designations, and received an A CinemaScore. Great reviews plus deep audience affection plus China dominance equals a generational box office result. Simple formula. Incredibly hard to execute.

#1 – Ne Zha 2 – ~$2.2 Billion Worldwide

Ne Zha 2 is an animated Chinese film that completely overtook the box office in 2025 to become the highest-earning theatrical release of the year, earning a staggering $2.2 billion worldwide. I know it sounds crazy, but a Chinese animated film that most Western audiences had never heard of outgrossed every Hollywood production released in 2025. By a lot. Released in the first month of the year, coinciding with Chinese New Year, Ne Zha 2 received a warm reception and broke numerous box office records in China and abroad.

It became the first non-English language film to gross $1 billion and $2 billion worldwide, surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing film ever in a single market, became the first film to earn $1 billion and $2 billion in a single market, and on March 2, Ne Zha 2 surpassed $2 billion – the first animated film in history to do so. The animated sensation went on to become the highest-grossing title in the Chinese market’s history at 15.44 billion RMB and the fifth biggest movie ever globally. This is not just a box office story. It is a cultural earthquake.

What 2025’s Box Office Reveals About Where Cinema Is Heading

While studios leaned into familiar franchises to guarantee audiences, international films – especially animated titles – challenged traditional Hollywood dominance. The lesson of 2025 is not that audiences want more of the same. It is that audiences want to feel deeply connected to what they are watching, whether that’s a decade-old animated universe, a Chinese mythological epic, or a live-action dragon adventure.

This year, the top 10 biggest earners worldwide had much in common, not the least of which was that they all had a connection to the past – whether as a sequel or a specific IP, familiarity was a major factor in why these films broke through to the top. Yet the truly surprising takeaway is the ascent of animation, both Western and Eastern, as the defining cinematic force of the era. Three of the top four films globally were animated, which would have seemed unthinkable even five years ago.

The global box office in 2025 is estimated to close out at $33.5 billion, representing a nearly 12% increase on 2024. Cinema is not dying. It is evolving – becoming more global, more animated, and more driven by stories that transcend language barriers. The real story of 2025 is not which franchise won. It is that the definition of what a blockbuster can be has quietly, permanently expanded.

What do you think the dominance of animated films and international productions means for Hollywood’s future? Drop your thoughts in the comments.