What happened at the movies in 2025 was pretty much the same as 2024: lots of kid-friendly films and popular movie franchises dominating screens and ransacking moviegoers’ pockets.
If you saw Zootopia 2, Lilo & Stitch, A Minecraft Movie, Jurassic World: Rebirth, Avatar: Fire & Ash, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu No Yaiba Infinity Castle, How To Train Your Dragon, F1: The Movie, and Superman on the big screen, you saw one or some of the year’s top 10 biggest boxoffice hits worldwide (per boxoffice tracking website boxofficemojo.com). If you enjoyed Ne Zha 2 at the cineplex, you enjoyed the 2025 champ.
Ne what, you say? You’re not the only one unfamiliar with the title. In fact, the animated movie, a sequel to a 2019 fantasy adventure flick that’s loosely based on the 16th-century Chinese novel Investiture of the Gods, did not even crack the top 20 moneymakers in the Philippines.
Much of the $2.1 billion total it made came from China where it was produced. It’s about the travails of a young boy named Ne Zha, the reincarnation of the demon orb, who must choose between good and evil in order to fight fate and become a hero.
The rest of the worldwide top 20 big screen victors skewed to older audiences but are mostly sequels or iterations of familiar titles like those in the top 10. They include Mission: Impossible—The Final Reckoning, The Fantastic Four: First Steps, Wicked: For Good, The Conjuring: Last Rites, Captain America: Brave New World, and Final Destination: Bloodlines.
(The list makes it official: the colon was King of the Movies in 2025. The Prince? The number 2.)
At least a dozen of these titles also landed in the Philippine top 20, led by The Conjuring and Final Destination. Most notable among the rest are two Filipino films, the family drama Meet, Greet & Bye with over P300 million worldwide gross and the Metro Manila Film Festival (MMFF) comedy Call Me Mother, which is projected to earn well over P200 million by the end of its theatrical run.
That’s practically also a repeat of 2024 when a drama and a comedy—the sequel Hello, Love, Again and the Vice Ganda MMFF topgrosser And The Breadwinner Is…—were the most watched local movies, earning P1.6 billion and over P400 million, respectively.
Did these boxoffice juggernauts make as much noise outside the cash registers? Hardly, if at all. The global MVP in terms of conversation stirrers and industry impact were the two biggest surprise hits of the year, Sinners and Weapons.
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Both are labeled as horror films but they are other films too. The vampire movie Sinners is also a historical drama about racism, one underpinned by such a strong musical sensibility and a sharp sense for American music history that some consider it somewhat of a movie musical, albeit not one in the traditional sense of 2024’s Wicked and its 2025 second half, Wicked: For Good.
Witchcraft flick Weapons is even less of a conventional horror film, playing out as part-mystery thriller, part-psychological drama, and part-serial killer flick laced with social commentary and dark humor about community and media until everything unravels in its cheeky, bonkers final act that borders into comedy territory.
With a combined worldwide gross of almost $650 million, these two critically acclaimed hits prove that creativity, freshness, and elevated artistry and craftsmanship in filmmaking can give the tried-and-tested formulas a run for their box office money. They are two of the biggest earners that are projected to figure prominently in this year’s awards race, with Sinners being considered a lock for a Best Picture nomination and Weapons for a Best Supporting Actress nod (for Amy Madigan’s colorful performance as the now-iconic Aunt Gladys) at Hollywood’s Academy Awards. Note that Sinners grossed almost twice One Battle After Another, the Leonardo DiCaprio action-drama that’s touted to be the frontrunner for Best Picture.
Fortunately there’s a bit of the same energy in Philippine cinema. While the year’s biggest Filipino hits are familiar family affairs, with Meet Greet & Byebeing the new Tanging Yaman and Call Me Mother the modern-day Ang Tatay Kong Nanay, at least two of 2025’s top 10 hits dared to bring something different to their genres. Put another way, the two unconventional films were able to connect with sizable audiences despite being unexpected and unapologetic in their creative visions and expressions.
The much-hyped Quezon, the third entry following Heneral Luna and Goyo: Ang Batang Heneral in the so-called Bayaniverse of historical biopics of Philippine heroes, scored with critics and audiences alike with its satirical look at the country’s second President. In fact, the movie was so unapologetic in its cinematic conceit it got the ire of a Quezon descendant, unleashed very publicly during a talk back featuring the movie’s director Jerrold Tarrog and cast including the onscreen Manuel Quezon, Jericho Rosales, after a sold out screening in a popular mall.
While the movie did not quite reach the box office figures of 2015’s Luna and 2018’s Goyo its gross of almost P80 million is definitely nothing to be scoffed at in the post-pandemic era when the local movie industry is still miles away from the kind of business it used to make before the pandemic. On the artistic side, Quezon looks primed to receive a slew of nominations in the 2026 awards season.
The other bright spot came from Sunshine, an independently produced coming-of-age drama about a young gymnast who finds out she is pregnant on the week of the national tryouts for the Olympics. The movie won the Crystal Bear for Best Film at the 75th Berlin International Film Festival held in March 2025. The Berlinale is one of the most prestigious film festivals in the world. Sunshine won the Generation14plus competition for outstanding youth-focused storytelling.
“This film takes a sensitive view on its modern and socially critical topic and its strong message. It touched us not only through the acting performances, but also with its dark, yet hopeful and empowering atmosphere, which the filmmakers created with their way of storytelling,” commented the Berlinale jury about the film.
As early as the film’s debuted in local cinemas for its regular theatrical run, industry observers have touted star Maris Racal as frontrunner for Best Actress and the film a strong contender for Best Picture in this year’s awards race.
For a film about abortion to run for over a month in theaters and earn almost P50 million in a country that’s still predominantly Catholic and strongly conservative is nothing short of a miracle. It shows that there is an audience for brave, bold, well-made non-mainstream Filipino fare. The question is if that audience is big enough to support that sub-industry of the Filipino movie industry.
Let’s see what happens in 2026.
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