Tom Cruise, Superman and 'Avatar' Hold Keys to 2025 Box Office

FILE PHOTO: Paris 2024 Olympics - Ceremonies - Paris 2024 Closing Ceremony - Stade de France, Saint-Denis, France - August 11, 2024. Actor Tom Cruise jumps from the roof of the Stade de France during the closing ceremony. REUTERS/Phil Noble/File Photo

Asharq Al Awsat

10:15-21 March 2025 AD ـ 21 Ramadan 1446 AH

Asharq Al Awsat

10:15-21 March 2025 AD ـ 21 Ramadan 1446 AH

Tom Cruise, Superman and 'Avatar' Hold Keys to 2025 Box Office

Tom Cruise takes on what may be his final "Mission: Impossible," a new Superman will wear the red cape, and the record-setting "Avatar" sci-fi series will return to movie theaters this year.
Those films and more are giving cinema operators hope that the long recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic will continue in 2025. Five years after the start of the health crisis, moviegoing has not fully rebounded.
Box office receipts totaled $8.6 billion last year in the United States and Canada, 25% below the pre-pandemic heights of $11.4 billion in 2019, Reuters reported.
The film industry was disrupted again in 2023 when Hollywood writers and actors went on strike.
"That complex matrix of filmmaking, where everyone wants the best talent and the best actors and the best sets, it takes a long time to get that running again," said Tim Richards, founder and CEO of Europe's Vue Cinemas. "2025 is going to feel the tail end of that."
Top names in the movie business will gather at the annual CinemaCon convention in Las Vegas early next month to talk about the state of the industry.
The conference draws executives from Hollywood studios and multiplex operators such as AMC Entertainment, Cinemark and Cineworld as well as owners of single theaters in small towns.
At the Academy Awards this month, "Anora" filmmaker and best director winner Sean Baker delivered a "battle cry" for filmmakers, distributors and audiences to support theaters.
"The theater-going experience is under threat," he said, noting that the number of screens shrunk during the pandemic.
"If we don't reverse this trend, we'll be losing a vital part of our culture," Baker added.
Shawn Robbins, Director of Movie Analytics at Fandango and founder and owner of Box Office Theory, said the movie business was adjusting to "a new normal."
"Event movies are increasingly drivers of the business," Robbins said. "There's even more weight on their shoulders in terms of box office dollars."
Moviegoers still turn out for big-budget films, Robbins said, but have shown they are happy to wait to watch others at home.
"It is very common knowledge that a lot of movies will be available to stream within three to eight weeks, whereas it used to be a minimum of three months," he said.
'AVATAR' AS TIPPING POINT?
Among the big hitters coming to theaters this year are "Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning," a movie that may be Cruise's last appearance in the long-running action franchise. "One last time," he says in the trailer. The film will debut over the US Memorial Day weekend in May, along with Walt Disney's live-action version of animated classic "Lilo & Stitch."
Brad Pitt plays a Formula 1 driver in the June release "F1," and in July, Warner Bros will release its new "Superman" movie directed by "Guardians of the Galaxy" filmmaker James Gunn and starring David Corenswet.
From Marvel, the anti-hero team "Thunderbolts" will kick off the summer moviegoing season in early May, followed by "The Fantastic Four" in late July.
Around the November and December holidays, offerings include the second part of musical box office phenomenon "Wicked," animated sequel "Zootopia 2" and "Avatar: Fire and Ash," the third film in James Cameron's "Avatar" series. The first "Avatar" is the highest-grossing movie of all time, and the second movie ranks third.
Robbins projected 2025 would end with a slight increase in domestic box office receipts compared with last year, "maybe flirting with $9 billion." He said it is unclear when ticket sales will return to pre-pandemic levels.
Richards said he believed the new "Avatar" would kick off "an extraordinary three to five years" for cinemas.
"We're going to see (Avatar) as the tipping point," Richards said. "2026 has got an extraordinary number of great films."

Forbidden K-Pop to Center Stage: North Koreans Set for Music Debut

This picture taken on March 6, 2025 shows K-pop group 1Verse members (L-R) Hyuk, Kenny, Nathan, Seok and Aito posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at a studio in Seoul. (AFP)

08:31-21 March 2025 AD ـ 21 Ramadan 1446 AH

Forbidden K-Pop to Center Stage: North Koreans Set for Music Debut

This picture taken on March 6, 2025 shows K-pop group 1Verse members (L-R) Hyuk, Kenny, Nathan, Seok and Aito posing for a photo during an interview with AFP at a studio in Seoul. (AFP)

Growing up in North Korea, Hyuk's childhood was about survival. He never listened to banned K-pop music but, after defecting to the South, he's about to debut as an idol.

Hyuk is one of two young North Koreans in a new K-pop band called 1Verse -- the first time that performers originally from the nuclear-armed North have been trained up for stardom in South Korea's global K-pop industry.

Before he was 10, Hyuk -- who like many K-pop idols now goes by one name -- was skipping school to work on the streets in his native North Hamgyong province and admits he "had to steal quite a bit just to survive".

"I had never really listened to K-pop music", he told AFP, explaining that "watching music videos felt like a luxury to me".

"My life was all about survival", he said, adding that he did everything from farm work to hauling shipments of cement to earn money to buy food for his family.

But when he was 13, his mother, who had escaped North Korea and made it to the South, urged him to join her.

He realized this could be his chance to escape starvation and hardship, but said he knew nothing about the other half of the Korean peninsula.

"To me, the world was just North Korea -- nothing beyond that," he told AFP.

His bandmate, Seok, also grew up in the North -- but in contrast to Hyuk's hardscrabble upbringing, he was raised in a relatively affluent family, living close to the border.

As a result, even though K-pop and other South Korean content like K-dramas are banned in the North with harsh penalties for violators, Seok said "it was possible to buy and sell songs illegally through smugglers".

Thanks to his older sister, Seok was listening to K-pop and even watching rare videos of South Korean artists from a young age, he told AFP.

"I remember wanting to imitate those cool expressions and styles -- things like hairstyles and outfits," Seok told AFP.

Eventually, when he was 19, Seok defected to the South. Six years later, he is a spitting image of a K-Pop idol.

- Star quality -

Hyuk and Seok were recruited for 1Verse, a new boy band and the first signed to smaller Seoul-based label Singing Beetle by the company's CEO Michelle Cho.

Cho was introduced to both of the young defectors through friends.

Hyuk was working at a factory when she met him, but when she heard raps he had written she told AFP that she "knew straight away that his was a natural talent".

Initially, he "professed a complete lack of confidence in his ability to rap", Cho said, but she offered him free lessons and then invited him to the studio, which got him hooked.

Eventually, "he decided to give music a chance", she said, and became the agency's first trainee.

In contrast, Seok "had that self-belief and confidence from the very beginning", she said, and lobbied hard to be taken on.

When Seok learned that he would be training alongside another North Korean defector, he said it "gave me the courage to believe that maybe I could do it".

- 'We're almost there' -

The other members of 1Verse include a Chinese-American, a Lao-Thai American and a Japanese dancer. The five men in their 20s barely speak each other's languages.

But Hyuk, who has been studying English, says it doesn't matter.

"We're also learning about each other's cultures, trying to bridge the gaps and get closer little by little," he said.

"Surprisingly, we communicate really well. Our languages aren't perfectly fluent, but we still understand each other. Sometimes, that feels almost unbelievable."

Aito, the Japanese trainee who is the main dancer in the group, said he was "fascinated" to meet his North Korean bandmates.

"In Japan, when I watched the news, I often saw a lot of international issues about defectors, so the overall image isn't very positive," he said.

But Aito told AFP his worries "all disappeared" when he met Hyuk and Seok. And now, the five performers are on the brink of their debut.

It's been a long road from North Korea to the cusp of K-pop stardom in the South for Hyuk and Seok -- but they say they are determined to make 1Verse a success.

"I really want to move someone with my voice. That feeling grows stronger every day," said Seok.

Hyuk said being part of a real band was a moving experience for him.

"It really hit me, like wow, we're almost there."

Tom Cruise, Superman and 'Avatar' Hold Keys to 2025 Box Office

Tom Cruise, Superman and 'Avatar' Hold Keys to 2025 Box Office

Most Viewed

Forbidden K-Pop to Center Stage: North Koreans Set for Music Debut

Forbidden K-Pop to Center Stage: North Koreans Set for Music Debut

لم تشترك بعد