2025: The Year of Big Budget Director Visions
Some may say that film is dead, but if anything, it felt more revitalized than ever in 2025. With studios like A24 and Disney cranking out numerous box office hits like “Lilo & Stitch,” “Warfare,” “Superman” and “Materialists,” this year’s brightest lights have come from individual directors and their imagination.
First, we have Korean director Bong Joon Ho’s “Mickey 17.” Advertised since mid-2024, the movie burst out of the gates March 7 with a budget of $118 million. The film stars Robert Pattinson as an anti-social, “expendable” weirdo doomed to die repeatedly, accompanied by a star-studded cast of political and immoral caricatures including Mark Ruffalo, Toni Collette and Steven Yeun.
Grossing $131.8 million internationally, “Mickey 17” did not earn the money spent to make it (a number around $250-300 would have been more accurate), though that matters little to anyone who watched the film. The surreal plot, bleak comedy and endearingly terrifying alien creatures on screen stay in viewers’ minds far longer than any number, showing that just because you go broke, doesn’t mean you’ve lost.
Similarly, Ryan Coogler’s “Sinners” spent more than it made, but you’d be hard-pressed to find anyone who places significance in that fact. The director of box office hits like “Creed” and “Black Panther,” Coogler has shown his ability to make beaucoup bucks while centering African American stories. Yet with “Sinners,” his goal was not simply to center and succeed, but to flesh out histories and reimagine futures.
Featuring the director’s fifth feature collaboration with Michael B. Jordan, a breakout performance from actor Miles Caton and an ensemble of legendary African American actors, the movie evokes a time past but far from forgotten. A vampire horror, a religious musical drama and a historical epic, “Sinners” was not conceived for monetary gain, but for cultural celebration.
Finally, Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” could in no way be considered a cash grab and, in many ways, that is its beauty. Though it stars critically acclaimed actors like Leonardo DiCaprio and Benicio del Toro, and between $130 and $175 million was spent on marketing and production, the film’s gross of $198 million still falls flat from its $300 million goal.
Yet again, though, who really cares? Critics and audiences alike agree, the film is one of Anderson’s and the 21st century’s best, with heart-pounding performances and revolutionary theming composing a modern portrait of America like no other.
So, the next time you read a headline about a “box office failure,” don’t be hesitant in looking closer and finding its value for yourself. The value of monetary success in art is of course important, but it is never the final criteria of quality.
