Each of the 10 highest-grossing films of 2024 in the U.S. were sequels—well, except for Wicked, an adaptation of a Broadway hit based on a book that takes place in The Wizard of Oz universe. But those were practically just a warm up for what’s around the corner.
If familiarity breeds contempt, prepare to be angry at the sheer amount of sequels in 2025.
While it’s not exactly unusual for the highest-grossing films of the year to have numbers in their titles—or colons, followed by subtitles—last year felt different. Barbie and Oppenheimer added some flair among the typical superhero fare, and love or hate left-field hit Sound of Freedom, at least it wasn’t a sequel. Beyond the top-grossers, there were plenty of original comedies with theatrical releases in 2023 like Bottoms, Dicks: The Musical, Joy Ride, and No Hard Feelings. Instead of going further in that direction in 2024, the franchise machine seemed to ramp up and steal the spotlight from nearly everything around it. That trend is set to continue next year.
The year of the sequel—again
Looking back at the major U.S. releases of 2024, 26 sequels or prequels hit theaters. According to an IMDB list of upcoming releases, there will be 34 sequels or prequels in 2025. That means more robot shenanigans from M3GAN, more diary-scribbling from Bridget Jones, and more defying of gravity from all the good folks at Wicked. There’s even a sequel to The Passion of the Christ reportedly on the way, which makes sense given the source material sort of counts as perhaps the original reboot.
It’s not that Hollywood sequels are necessarily a net negative. Many of those that premiered in 2024 were both critical hits and commercial successes. Twisters and the cleverly titled Beetlejuice Beetlejuice pulled off the Top Gun: Maverick trick of revisiting long-dormant, one-and-done IP without making it feel like a pure cash grab. Furiosa, The First Omen, and A Quiet Place: Day One all used the prequel format to breathe new life into their franchises. Smile 2 brilliantly built out the world of the original’s lore, while applying some timely social commentary. And whatever Alien: Romulus was—prequel, sequel, what-have-you—it rocked.
The problem is that we’ve long been headed for an era where the only films getting theatrical releases are big-budget franchise-extenders, and more sequels means fewer counter-examples. It’s harder to prove original movies can still make money, after all, when not enough of them have the opportunity to do so. The first Smile movie, for instance, was originally meant to stream on Paramount+ in 2022, until positive test screenings convinced some executives to put it in theaters–where it became successful enough to get a sequel this year.
Sequels to watch
If the lineup for 2025 must be crowded with Hollywood sequels, though, at least there are plenty of promising examples in the bunch. 28 Years Later reunites the original film’s creative team—director Danny Boyle, writer Alex Garland, and star Cillian Murphy—for the first time in over 20 years. Hot off the Hulu hit, Prey—which gave the Predator franchise its best story in decades—director Dan Trachtenberg is returning for Predator: Badlands. The spinoff sequel Ballerina could be just the creative shot in the arm the John Wick series needs, while the next Mission: Impossible offers Tom Cruise the chance to end this franchise on a high note, if he chooses to accept it. And Freakier Friday and Sister Act 3 might be more than just millennial nostalgia-bait.
Those movies, however, will be sharing screens with the likes of Jurassic World: Rebirth, Captain America: Brave New World, Saw 11, and plenty of other movies that sound as if they were generated by algorithm in the middle of a board meeting.
There’s no obvious reason why theatrical releases in 2024 grossed several hundred million dollars fewer than those in 2023. If more sequels in 2025 don’t end up righting the ship, however, perhaps it’s time to try a truly original idea for Hollywood: see if less is more.
