US based movie studios have understandably always focused on the domestic box office as its key market, however as we look at the 2025 global box office we can see that the importance of the North American market is beginning to decrease.
The best example of this is the #1 movie (by far) of 2025 at the global box office, Ne Zha 2, which took $1.9bn, $600m ahead of the #2 movie. $1.86bn of this take was all from its home nation of China, but this specific example aside, the Chinese market is becoming increasingly important to global box office success.
Zootopia 2 currently stands as the #2 film of 2025 at the global box office with 78% of its nearly $1.3bn take coming from international markets, domestically it is the #6 movie of the year. The international take, specifically that in China (which accounts for $502m of the $990m international figure) is what has made it such a hit.
The latest Avatar movie, Fire & Ash just opened this weekend and took $88m domestically but nearly 3 times this amount, £257 internationally, showing just how important international markets are to film makers.
Looking at the top 10 global movies of 2025 and all but one made more than 50% of its take from international markets. That’s not to say you can’t have a huge hit without wide global appeal - Sinners was one of the biggest critical and commercial hits in the US in 2025. It sits as the #7 film at the domestic box office, ahead of huge franchise films such as The Fantastic Four, How to Train Your Dragon, Captain America & Mission: Impossible. It only took 24% of its global take from international markets but it clearly resonated well with domestic audiences.
The flip side to this though is that the big franchise movies, with huge budgets that need to have wide global appeal, have seen a number of under performers this year. Especially when we look at superhero films. Superman and The Fantastic Four took less than 50% of their global take from international markets and Captain America: Brave New World and Thunderbolts only managed 51% and 50% respectively. When you compare this to the likes of Avengers; Endgame that took 69% and Spider-Man: No Way Home that took 58% its clear that in the period of big budget blockbusters international markets are key to being successful.
And this success is not only limited to the box office. Licensing as well as being great advertising for a film is a huge downstream revenue driver and if not many people see your film internationally they’re also not going to buy any products. Licensing, like film making, benefits from scale, although we have seen huge growth of niche and loyal audiences for specific IPs, when it comes to movies - the bigger and more global you can make the potential audience the better.