All of the three 2025 movies that currently have a box office result of $1 billion or more all have the same origins, making their shared success this year even more noteworthy. The past few years have seen many movies cross the $1 billion threshold when it comes to their worldwide box office, with some releases seeming basically destined for this result, and some surprise successes netting this amount to keep things interesting.

2025 has been no exception, as multiple films have achieved this major milestone with their theatrical results, showing that movies can still enjoy immense theatrical success, even in an era where streaming is in many ways bigger than ever. Interestingly, 2025’s current $1B+ movies all share one key thing in common, proving the potential of one often underappreciated corner of the world of cinema.

2025’s 3 $1B+ Movies Are All Follow-Ups To Animated Movies

Though 2025’s biggest box office hits are different in many other regards, the three films in question all share an origin of sorts, as they’re all follow-ups to animated movies – with Ne Zha 2 having made $2 billion with its worldwide box office, Zootopia 2 having just become 2025’s second-highest grossing movie of 2025 by reaching the $1.1 billion mark, and Lilo & Stitch coming in third for the year with its own $1 billion results.

Of course, it’s worth noting that, while Ne Zha 2 and Zootopia 2 are animated movies themselves that serve as direct sequels to the stories they follow up on, Lilo & Stitch is a live-action remake of the original 2002 animated Disney movie. However, all three still ultimately follow up on the original animated movies their respective series began with – which is interesting to note, even though this trend may be broken by 2025’s next possible $1B movie.

2025’s $1B Movie Rule May Be Broken In The Final Days Of The Year

Though 2025 is in its final days, there are still some major movies on the way for the year – and the film that looks set to be the biggest of this time period is, of course, that of the third Avatar movie, Avatar: Fire and Ash. With both previous Avatar movies having garnered well over $2 billion, it stands to reason that the third film will at absolute worst come close to these previous results, adding it to 2025’s $1B+ movie roster.

This would make it the outlier among 2025’s existing movies that have broken the $1 billion box office mark, which is notable both in that it would show animated movie follow-ups weren’t the only films that were capable of reaching this milestone in 2025, and in that it would further reflect how impressive these $1 billion results were, since their only box office peer would be the next installment in a $5 billion movie series.