With the curtain set to go up on CinemaCon tomorrow, Gower Street Analytics has increased its 2025 global box office forecast by a little over $1B. From an original projection of $33B as we reported in December last year, Gower Street now sees 2025 coming in at $34.1B.

The estimate would rep a 13% year-on-year hike from 2024 (+10% at current exchange rates), and a 0.5% increase from 2023 (+3% at today’s rates). In total, the 2025 estimate would be 13% behind the average of the three pre-pandemic years (2017-2019) at current exchange rates. 

The higher 2025 projection is based on first quarter overall actuals and, more specifically, on the unexpected outsized performance of Chinese blockbuster Ne Zha 2. That phenom this weekend crossed the RMB 15 billion mark in China ($2.1B using today’s rates), while it has also amassed an estimated $50M+ outside of the home market. Resultantly, Gower has upped its China 2025 forecast by $1B to $7.6B. That revised estimate would see China finish 30% ahead of 2024, and (give or take) would be a 1% shift on 2023 (still 6% behind the average of 2017-2019 at today’s rates). 

Excluding China, the projection for the international box office sees a marginal increase of approximately $200M to $17B. Gower notes that due to recovering exchange rates against the U.S. dollar this growth could have gone up by approximately $500M, but marginally lower than predicted results in Q1 led to a performance-based reduction for the year of around $300M. The new $17B projection reps a 10% jump on 2024 (+5% at current exchange rates); a 1% decrease against 2023 (+2% at current rates); and is 14% behind an average of 2017-2019 at current rates. 

Meanwhile, the estimate for the domestic market has shifted slightly downwards from $9.7B to $9.5B. Gower cited a lack of breakout hits so far in 2025 for the reduction. A $9.5B 2025 North America result would represent an 8% increase on 2024 and a 5% increase on 2023, but a 17% deficit against the average of 2017-2019.  

While the start of the year has so far been lackluster, there’s still a lot to come in 2025 and these new projections arrive on the eve of annual studio-exhibition confab CinemaCon which kicks off tomorrow here in Las Vegas and runs through April 4.