Between the link on the main page and being one of the certainties in life — along with taxes, which get much less attention on Wikipedia — readers are always checking the recently deceased. And in this weird year, there was even a week that the death list was the most viewed article. Normally this only happens with the departed themselves, with 12 people topping their weeks, whether young and unexpected (Diogo Jota crashing his car at 28, our #32 having health issues at 39, and the murder of a 31 year old right below this entry, which was so surprising that it led to 15 million views in a single day) or older with much legacy (mostly artists in #10, #24, #42, David Lynch, Brian Wilson, Graham Greene, Robert Redford and Dharmendra, but also the proeminent world figure at #12), a category which also includes two more entries of our list in the actors at #30 (which only didn’t reach number one because of people seeking the real life horror story at #4) and #34 (who was found dead the same day as #32). Rather than just list more of the people who left us in 2025, to keep the Top 25 Report’s tradition of just discussing this through song lyrics: “It’s something unpredictable, but in the end it’s right. I hope you had the time of your life.”
Gamey as a grouse and almost as subtle as a hammer to the head, Ryan Coogler‘s woke, omnistic take on From Dusk Till Dawn managed not only to astonish audiences (making $367 million on a $90 million budget) but also thrum a melodious riff on the complex interplay of racial tensions that underlie the history not only of America, but of American folk music. It did not, however, perform as well internationally, suggesting its impact may have limited to the English-speaking world. If so, it is a mark of just how strong that impact was that it remains the most Wiki-ed film of the year, while the highest-grossing English language movie of the year, Disney’s Lilo and Stitch reamke, did not break the top 80. That impact was especially felt by critics; with 97% on Rotten Tomatoes and 84 on Metacritic, Sinners is the most acclaimed big-budget American film this year, but has become almost as renowned for its backstory, in which Coogler, post-Creed and Black Panther, was able to secure a very favourable deal from the studio prior to release. The Hollywood trades were notably silent on the film’s subsequent success, leading many to suspect they were downplaying it in case anyone else tried to follow in Coogler’s immensely profitable footsteps.
Apr. 20 (finishes opening weekend with $108 million)
John Michael Osbourne helped create heavy metal music as the singer of Black Sabbath and followed that with an equally successful solo career and all sorts of endeavours, including showcasing the peculiarities of his family in the reality show The Osbournes. It was a downright miracle that he survived for decades taking every drug in existence (scientists even analyzed his genome and found mutations that allowed him to process substances easier!), but eventually Parkinson’s disease and various injuries slowed him down, to the point he decided to call his retirement through a massive charity concert in his native Birmingham that had all sorts of rock stars playing before it closed on an Ozzy set and then one with a reunited Sabbath, with him in a throne to show the Prince of Darkness hadn’t lost his majesty even if he could no longer walk. Ozzy’s goodbye from stages turned out to be very timely, as 17 days later he died at 76, leaving behind an extensive body of work (counting just studio albums, 7 with Sabbath and 13 solo!), 6 children and many grandchildren.
It’s been a long, strange trip, but James Gunn is now in charge of DC’s live action universe. And with Marvel winding down in popularity, it may be just the right time. Just like last time, they started with their best-known property, and struck gold, with a 5x return on a $125 million budget. With an 83% on Rotten Tomatoes and a 68 on Metacritic, it’s clear critics found the film overwhelmingly OK. But at least this movie remembered that Superman is a: fun and b: impossible without John Williams.
The tech giant‘s streaming service released another acclaimed season as it competes with the streaming giant. This science fictionpsychological thriller series created by Dan Erickson; and executive produced and primarily directed by Ben Stiller; follows employees at Lumon Industries, a biotechnology corporation, that have undergone “severance”—a procedure that splits a person’s memories between work and their personal life. This creates two separate identities for employees: the “innie”, who has no knowledge of the outside world, and the “outie”, who lives their life outside without any knowledge of their job. Main cast headed by Adam Scott and Britt Lower returned for the second season along with some new character additions. The second season consisting of 10 episodes, aired an episode every Thursdays from mid-January to mid-March 2025. It received positive reception and acclamation as well as 10 Primetime Emmy nods and 17 Primetime Creative Arts Emmy nods, from which it won 8 awards as of this report. A third seaon has been confirmed and annouced it won’t take as long as the second season which was delayed due to the WGA strike and SAG-AFTRA strike.
Here’s a recap of the first season: Mark S. / Mark Scout, Dylan G. / Dylan George, Helly R. and Irving B. / Irving Bailiff work at the Macrodata Refinement (MDR) department with Harmony Cobel and Seth Milchick as the manager and deputy manager of the severed floor with Jame Eagan as the current CEO of Lumon. In the first season finale, using the overtime contingency the innies gain control in the outside world. And to everyone’s suprise Helly R. is actually Helena Eagan, next in line of succession and the daughter of Jame Eagan; who underwent the severance procedure as a publicity stunt. Helly R. now goes on stage for a scheduled speech for Helena Eagan; and tells the crowd of the innies’ subjugation and torment. Meantime, it was revealed that Ms. Casey, the wellness counselor on the severed floor at Lumon is actually Gemma Scout; Mark Scout’s supposedly deceased wife. As Milchick deactivates the overtime contingency to revert the three to their outies, season concluded in a cliff hanger.
Now a summary of the second season: Following the last season finale’s incident which is now known as “Macrodat Uprising” Milchick is promoted to manager while Cobel is let go and a child named Eustice Huang is the new deputy manager. Helena films an apology video covering up her outburst at the gala as the result of intoxication from a non-Lumon medication. Asal Reghabi, an ex-Lumon surgeon reveals to Mark’s outie about a reintegration procedure for innie and outie to which he agrees. The crew is sent to “Outdoor Retreat and Team-Building Occurrence” (ORTBO) where we learn about some history of Kier Eagan, the late founder & first CEO of Lumon, who is worshipped with cult-like devotion within the company and later Helly and Mark have sex, after which Mark hallucinates Gemma’s head on Helly’s body!!!–Later revealed it was Helena and not Helly; Feeling that Helena stole this experience from her, Helly initiates sex with Mark in a following episode. Episode 7 revealed the backstory of Gemma and Mark: met at a blood drive, had a loving marriage, marred by difficulties conceiving a child, has a miscarriage, visited a fertility clinic run by Lumon. In the present, Gemma lives on the testing floor at Lumon, where every day she visits multiple rooms (which share the names of MDR files completed by Mark) that awaken a separate innie forced to endure a certain unpleasant experience. On the testing floor, when Gemma tells Mauer she wants to leave, he lies by saying that Mark remarried and had a child. Episode 8 revealed the backstory of Harmony Cobel, a girl from Salt’s Neck who originally invented the severance procedure. In the second season finale, through video recordings, Mark’s outie asks his innie to rescue Gemma from the testing floor after he completes the Cold Harbor file; otherwise, Gemma will die. But, Mark’s innie storms off after he realizes he is being asked to sacrifice himself and Helly. But at last, Mark finds Gemma and they escape to the severed floor, reverting to their innies. Mark guides Gemma through the exit door but chooses to return to Helly. The two run through the hallways as the season concluded in another cliff hanger.
The number one contributor to the English Wikipedia, and its most linked-to article, has maintained a consistent ranking in views over the years, despite almost never appearing in the weekly chart. This position, much like the Deaths in… articles, appeares unaffected by outside affairs, changes in technology, or the US’s current reputation (which, according to an annual survey of G7 nations, took a nosedive this year, falling 18 slots on a list of 60). Important does not have to mean liked.
That asterisk was meant to indicate that they’re really the Avengers, but seeing it hanging there can’t help but put an “allegedly”, or “for now” in one’s mind. Marvel are not what they used to be. The buzz is long gone; too many underwhelming streaming shows. Too much toxic discourse. Plus there’s the simple fact that the story they’ve been telling since 2008 ended definitively with Avengers: Endgame six years ago. A combination of the pandemic, shifts in viewing habits and at least one arrest for assault left Marvel scrambling to rebuild, with little to show for it so far. The odd thing is, were Thunderbolts* in any other franchise, it would be consideered a success: A $390 million gross on a $180 million budget is, more or less. a 2.5x return, the definition of a hit. But Thunderbolts* isn’t in another franchise. And the franchise it is in needs to get its mojo back before Avengers: Doomsday serves as its epitaph.
The son of director and comedian Carl Reiner carved out a name for himself in Hollywood in the 80s and early 90s, when, over the course of nine years, he directed some of the most beloved films of all time: This Is Spinal Tap, The Sure Thing, Stand By Me, The Princess Bride, When Harry Met Sally…, Misery and A Few Good Men, which provided breakthroughs for John Cusack, Aaron Sorkin, Billy Crystal, Meg Ryan, River Phoenix, Kiefer Sutherland and Kathy Bates. Then he made North, a childhood fantasy so monumentally misguided that Roger Ebert‘s review of it became legendary: “I hated this movie. Hated hated hated hated hated this movie. Hated it. Hated every simpering stupid vacant audience-insulting moment of it. Hated the sensibility that thought anyone would like it. Hated the implied insult to the audience by its belief that anyone would be entertained by it.” Those words apparently, became something of a curse because, aside from the success of The Bucket List, Reiner never attained his prior level of respectablility again. Admittedly, his decline must have been at least partially due to his troubles with his son, Nick, whose struggles with mental health and drug addiction became the subject of his film Being Charlie, which Nick co-wrote. Unfortunately, it seems his son’s demons finally won, as, on the 14th of December, 2025, he was arrested for the murder of both of his parents, for reasons currently unknown.
Among a rising crop of hungry horror directors (Ti West, Robert Eggers, Ari Aster, Osgood Perkins), Zach Cregger seems to have established an early lead (at least as far as profitability is concerned) with the same combination of disjointed narrative and genre mashing he displayed in his previous film Barbarian, only at a much higher level, with an emotionally yanking mix of horror, comedy and psychological drama, backed by superb performances. With a global box office of $270 million, a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes and and 81 on Metacritic, Weapons struck more of a chord with both audiences and critics than any horror movie this year not named Sinners.
The film’s soundtrack achieved similar success as well: highest debut on the Billboard 200 chart for 2025 soundtracks at 8th, highest-charting animated film’s soundtrack album on the chart since Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, first Netflix soundtrack to reach number one on the Top Soundtracks since Stranger Things 4. The fictional in-film K-pop groups Huntrix and the Saja Boys—with “Golden” and “Your Idol” respectively—topped the US Spotify chart with Huntrix becoming the highest-charting female K-pop group surpassing Blackpink, and the Saja Boys becoming the highest charting male K-pop group surpassing BTS. The Soundtrack went on to get GRAMMY nods as wells as VMA nods.
So in a nutshell, Netflix delivered yet another pop culture phenomenon, and Sony continues its animation victories, but live-action notexactly—will itchange?
In 1986, Marvel sold the rights to their most iconic team as they teetered on the brink of bankruptcy, leading to four (apropos) underwhelming if not downright terrible screen adaptations. And one good one if you count The Incredibles. Only in 2019 did Marvel regain the rights, though it cost Disney $70 billion. To be fair, they got a rash of other IP with it; though given that the performances of former Fox propterties since the deal, such as Alien and Predator, have proven just OK, a lot was riding on the success of Marvel’s first family once they finally returned home. And again, it proved… OK. With a budget of $200 million and a final gross of just over $500 million, Fantastic Four: First Steps broke even in theatres. But that clearly wasn’t what Disney were expecting, given that they used the movie to set the stage for Avengers Doomsday. With a Rotten Tomatoes score of 86% and a Metacritic score of 65, this film appears to have a similar critical consensus to Superman, that is, OK. But DC can take OK. Marvel can’t.
Another acting death emerged on the same day as Trachtenberg, Gene Hackman, who moved away from the public eye to live in New Mexico after a health-related retirement in 2004 (thus his acting career ended in a forgettable if not shameful note, Welcome to Mooseport), and passed away in odd circumstances: Hackman’s wife died suddenly of hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, advanced Alzheimer’s made him not notice she died or that their dog was in a nearby closet (leading him to starve to death), and six days later perished to a heart attack, but only 8 days later authorities broke into their home and found the bodies. An unusual end to a life that included a stay in the Marines (he even narrated two documentaries on the Corps after retiring) before working a lot across five decades, with 101 credited acting roles! Highlights included two Academy Awards for The French Connection and Unforgiven and three more nominations, #11’s archenemy Lex Luthor in three Superman films, techno-thrillers The Conversation and Enemy of the State, a brief and hilarious appearance in Young Frankenstein, and even voicing a villainous ant in Antz.
The film takes place 5 years after the events of Dominion, when the earth’s environment has largely proven inhospitable to the remaining populations of dinosaurs and other de-extinct prehistoric animals and the surviving creatures now reside in remote areas of the equatorial region, reminiscent of the environments where they once flourished including Île Saint-Hubert in the Atlantic Ocean where during the construction of the new park (in Jurassic World), InGen operated a dinosaur laboratory of genetics housing transgenic and mutated dinosaurs in 2008. And usual as always, one of the dinos broke-free but, this time its a six-limbed Tyrannosaurus called Distortus rex or D. rex and kills the employee negligent for its escape, prompting all personnel to abandon the island. Now in 2025, ParkerGenix a pharmaceutical company wants to collect biomaterial samples from three colossus dinosaur specimens, which are pivotal for a new cardiovascular disease treatment. So, it sends a crew illegally to the Île Saint-Hubert to gather bio-samples from the aquatic Mosasaurus, terrestrial Titanosaurus, and avian Quetzalcoatlus. They go on to rescue a shipwrecked family, where they manage to collect samples from an attacking Mosasaurus but get attacked by a pack of Spinosaurus as well. They manage to get the remaining samples and search for the abandoned InGen complex while encountering various dinosaurs, including a hybrid raptor/pterosaur known as Mutadon and an Aquilops. The remaining mebers manage to escape attacks from Tyrannosaurus, Mutadons and D. rex as well. Finally, they distribute the biomaterial as an open source resource, ensuring global access.
The film received mixed reviews from critics, though some deemed it an improvement over previous entries. But, it grossed less than the previous Jurassic World films with $868 million worldwide against a budget of $180–$225 million while, all three previous films (including the worst received film in the franchise, Dominion) grossed over a billion dollars. This shows that how critics are very different from the real audience, or that those who didn’t like the previous movies wouldn’t give the franchise another shot. Meantime as of this report, there has been no official information about the future installments in the franchise but, there are rumours and speculations that a sequel to the film is in development with the cast returning and is expected to be released in June 2028…!
Jul. 6 (finishes opening weekend with $318 million)
Writer-director Sean Baker told once again the story of a sex worker — in this case a stripper played by Mikey Madison who marries the son of a Russian oligarch, and once he runs away with the arrival of daddy’s henchmen, she is forced to help them find him — and the result got glowing reviews and recouped its modest budget many times over. Though Anora never managed to get the attention of the world at large until it emerged as the big winner of the Academy Awards, missing only Best Supporting Actor while scoring four major categories (Best Picture, Director, Actress and Original Screenplay) and Best Editing. Specially as unlike previous Best Picture winners Everything Everywhere All At Once and Oppenheimer, it wasn’t going that well against heavy competition (The Substance, The Brutalist, Wicked, Conclave, Dune, etc.) in other awards, having won none out of 5 nods at the Golden Globes, and 2 out of 7 at the BAFTAs. So soon the netizens were asking “Did Anora deserve all those Oscars?”, and those who disagreed tended to say “This is just soft porn/a rehash of Pretty Woman!” or “Passing over Demi Moore for a younger actress just proves the point of The Substance!”. Or that it’s just another case of the Oscars being irrelevant, as even if the nominations aren’t mostly blatant Oscar bait with hollow storylines, AMPAS still has a big disconnect with actual filmgoers, not recognizing box office hits and giving Best Picture to movies the audience barely heard of, and it’s reflected on the low viewership numbers of the ceremony. But it could be worse, as at least before voting the Academy realized their mistake in nominating Emilia Pérez so much, and it’s better to see debates on whether Anora was worthy than this getting all the awards…
Other entries here discuss how hard it is to define “box office success” lately, specially when film fans go around trying to paint everything as a failure as if they were studio shareholders. Case in point, the eighth installment of Mission: Impossible, which ends the story of spy Ethan Hunt, as even if Tom Cruise is quite spry for 63 he deserves a break from live-threatening stunts. The movie was very expensive, estimated at the $300–400 million range, as along with the usual epic scope (the climactic scene involves a biplane chase with Cruise dangerously holding onto the aircraft), there were many problems that led to five release date changes, most proeminently the pandemic that started during the production of predecessor Dead Reckoning and the strikes that halted production for months. And unlike how Dead Reckoning underperformed because Barbenheimer opened right afterwards, The Final Reckoning was one half of a quite disparate opening weekend against the Lilo & Stitch remake (coincidentally, the original opened against another Tom Cruise movie), and in spite of the best opening of the franchise it didn’t beat its family-friendly competitor and finished its theatrical run just short of $600 million. Thus it didn’t double its budget and was labeled as a flop, but good video-on-demand numbers and the fact both critics and audiences had a positive response shows this is one movie that shouldn’t be reduced to box office data.
Mar. 23 (finishes opening weekend with $204 million)
The first superhero movie of the year was also the least well-received. Things were already unfavorable given the ever-growing continuity of the Marvel Cinematic Universe: viewers had better have watched the show The Falcon and the Winter Soldier to know how Falcon became Captain America and who were his sidekick and the old man he was defending; Eternals for why there was a giant stone man that governments were fighting over; and The Incredible Hulk, that had barely been acknowledged in 17 years, for the villain that shows up. And Marvel seemingly lost faith and constantly changed the project first announced with the subtitle New World Order, with constant rewrites – along with how the film has some underdeveloped subplots, one character that had appeared in set pictures and Happy Meal toys was nowhere to be seen – and pasting the appearance of the Red Hulk that the movie builds as a surprise all over the promotion to lure in viewers. Hence it didn’t impress reviewers and audiences much, with the $415 million earnings not turning into much profit given the budget escalated with the production problems, and the possible consequence of disappointment with Brave New World making the better received follow-up at #15 to underperform at the box office. In any case, the new Captain America might overcome this through his appearance in Avengers: Doomsday.
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