When looking at the 2025 movie release schedule, you might be confused what year you are in. Like any year, the movies of 2025 are trying their best to stand out and attract an audience. However, rather than trying to win the hearts of the American people with a new story, most of the biggest releases scheduled for 2025 are sequels, remakes, or biopics. It’s impossible to know for sure what the highest-grossing or most culturally impactful movies of 2025 will be. However, by looking at the release schedule and budget of upcoming releases, it’s possible to guess which ones major film studios are betting on being successful.
January, February and even early March are known in the filmmaking world as “dump months.” Essentially, movies released that early in the year have virtually no hope of winning a Golden Globe, and so movie studios drop movies that they don’t think will do very well. These might simply be bad movies, but they can also be movies that appeal to a niche audience. Most of the movies slated to be released in early 2025 look to be either very original or new takes on familiar tropes, which is very telling about what studios seem to be expecting audiences to like and dislike.
Some of these movies include “Mickey 17” coming out on March 7, which is directed by Bong Joon-ho, also known for Academy Award winner “Parasite”. “Mickey 17” features Robert Pattinson – in fact, multiple copies of him – colonizing an alien planet. The promotional photo alone, which shows two Pattinsons with different numbers painted on their sci-fi space suits looking into the camera, promises that this movie is going to be a weird one. Whether it will be enjoyably weird or not is yet to be determined. Another early-year release is “Love Hurts” coming out on Feb. 7 in which Ke Huy Quan of “Everything Everywhere All at Once” plays a hitman-turned-realtor who must take on the always popular “one last job” trope.
Even in the “dump months,” there are sequels such as “Paddington in Peru” coming out on Feb. 14 and “Den of Thieves 2: Pantera” on Jan. 10.
As the year goes on, releases become more and more based on previous work. After May, it becomes difficult to find releases that aren’t remakes, sequels or spin-offs. There are a decent number of biopics as well. The IMDb editors’ list of the ten most anticipated movies of 2025 is composed of five sequels, four remakes/reboots, and “A Minecraft Movie,” which is an original story but is based on an existing video game. Natasha Long, junior at IBW, says “I think people are copying each other. [But still] I love to see a movie, even if it’s a copy of another one.”
There are sequels to movies that recently came out, such as “Wicked: For Good,” and “Avatar: Fire and Ash”. There are also a surprising number of sequels to movies that have been out for quite a while. There are rumors of an upcoming sequel to “Dirty Dancing”, which came out in 1987, and there is a confirmed new “Naked Gun” film after the previous installment came out in 1994.
Live-action remakes of already popular animated films are also prevalent. There are scheduled remakes for “Lilo and Stitch”, “Snow White”, and “How to Train Your Dragon”. There’s no one definitive answer to explain the large number of sequels, but in the end it boils down to studios wanting to make more money. Sequels tap an already existing audience, rather than having to find a new one. The omnipotence of streaming is also changing the movie industry.
This has left many wondering: are the studios right? Do people really want to watch almost exclusively sequels and remakes? “I usually like newer movies but I don’t mind, like, sequels and remakes- interpretations,” says Owen Prater, junior at IBW.
Overall, whether this cinematic year is a good one or not depends on personal preference. Some may be happy to see new installments in their favorite series, while others may be disappointed in a lack of originality. As Natasha Long, junior at IBW puts it: “I love to see a movie, even if it’s a copy of another one.”
