Talk about a scary-good box office streak.
“The Conjuring: Last Rites,” which scored a franchise-best launch of $83 million domestically and $187 million globally over the weekend, has extended an epic theatrical run for Warner Bros. as the seventh consecutive release to open above $40 million. No other studio has ever achieved that level of consistency at the box office.
After a terrible theatrical stretch with duds like 2024’s “Joker: Folie a Deux” and this March’s “Mickey 17” and “The Alto Knights,” the fortunes at Warner Bros. began to rebound with April’s video game adaptation “A Minecraft Movie” ($162 million debut). The studio’s turnaround continued with Ryan Coogler and Michael B. Jordan’s vampire thriller “Sinners” ($48 million), followed by a quartet of summer offerings, “Final Destination Bloodlines” ($51.6 million), Brad Pitt’s “F1: The Movie” ($57 million), “Superman” ($125 million) and director Zach Cregger’s horror mystery “Weapons” ($43.5 million).
What’s even better is that all of those films managed to stick around beyond opening weekend, a fate that several major releases recently failed to achieve. (Disney’s “The Fantastic Four: First Steps” and “Thunderbolts,” for example, dropped steeply after promising debuts.) “A Minecraft Movie” is the studio’s biggest earner of the year with $957 million globally, followed by “F1” (which Warner Bros. distributed for Apple) with $617 million, “Superman” with $613 million, “Sinners” with $366 million, “Final Destination: Bloodlines” with $307 million and “Weapons” with $245 million and counting.
“Warner Bros. is having a fantastic run,” says analyst David A. Gross of Franchise Entertainment Research. “The studio made outstanding choices and took some big creative risks, and they’re paying off.”
Back in the spring, Bong Joon Ho’s sci-fi epic “Mickey 17” with Robert Pattinson as well as the Robert De Niro-led crime drama “The Alto Knights” had set the studio back at least $110 million in losses. But the remaining lineup has delivered some enviable profit margins. Case in point: “Sinners” is expected to generate around $60 million in theatrical profits; “Superman” around $125 million; “Final Destination: Bloodlines” approximately $75 million; “Weapons” around $65 million (and counting), according to knowledgable individuals. For “F1,” Warner Bros. was paid a flat distribution fee as well as a percentage of revenues in line with certain box office benchmarks, resulting in theatrical profits of roughly $34 million. Warner Bros. declined to comment. A studio insider disputed these figures without providing specific numbers; the source added that Warner Bros. has made roughly $600 million in combined year-to-date theatrical profits before counting the latest “Conjuring.”
Thanks to the dramatic turnaround, Warner Bros. Motion Picture Group co-chiefs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy are fully off the hot seat. That wasn’t the case a few months ago given the studio’s late 2024 and early 2025 run of box office disasters. Grappling with a steady stream of headlines about whether or not De Luca and Abdy would keep their jobs, the duo ousted the studio’s marketing chief Josh Goldstine and international distribution head Andrew Cripps. The surprise shakeup only added to a growing sense of uncertainty at the studio.
“Studios get hot, and studios get cold,” Gross adds. “Just before this, they weathered a long, bad run. It won’t last forever. Hopefully they’ll remember this [run] when they go on a cold steak. That’ll happen too; it always does.”
Those outsized wins will take a bit of pressure off the next big Warner Bros. gamble, Paul Thomas Anderson’s epic “One Battle After Another,” which opens later in September. That film, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, cost at least $130 million to produce and requires roughly $300 million to breakeven at the box office. For context, Anderson’s highest-grossing film is 2007’s Western “There Will Be Blood,” which earned $76.4 million globally.
“One Battle After Another” will be the studio’s final release of the year. Then in 2026, Warner Bros. will deliver Emerald Fennell’s “Wuthering Heights” remake with Margot Robbie and Jacob Elordi, director Maggie Gyllenhaal’s $80 million “Frankenstein spinoff “The Bride” and two DC’s adventures in “Supergirl” and “Clayface.” There’s also Anne Hathaway and Ewan McGregor-led original sci-fi thriller “Flowervale Street,” video game sequel “Mortal Kombat II” an untitled film from “Birdman” director Alejandro G. Iñárritu and star Tom Cruise, and “Dune Part Three.” On paper, it looks like another risky slate that spotlights genre fare and filmmaker-driven originals over time-tested franchises. But then again, most of the studio’s 2025 slate didn’t enter theaters as guaranteed hits. And we know how those bets paid off.
