‘Mickey 17’ Is Just the First Big Risk Warner Bros. Must Take in 2025

The tepid $19 million domestic opening for Warner Bros.’ “Mickey 17” over the weekend led many to highlight its difficult path to profitability off its lofty $118 million budget.

“Mickey 17” is likely just the start of what will be a year of high anxiety at the studio, and yet it’s the bumpy road Warners really has no choice but to take.

Warners also has more expensive auteur gambles in the vein of “Mickey 17” due later this year: Ryan Coogler’s horror film “Sinners,” out in April, and Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another,” currently slated for August. If you recall, Coogler is known for delivering a billion-dollar success to Disney and Marvel in “Black Panther,” while Anderson is a highly praised filmmaker and has been for decades.

Both directors’ films for Warners this year come with hefty price tags. “Sinners” reportedly cost $90 million to produce, while “One Battle After Another” is said to be well over the $100 million mark. Like Pattinson in “Mickey 17,” the other films are led by A-list talent, with “Creed” and “Black Panther’s” Michael B. Jordan toplining “Sinners” and Leonardo DiCaprio tackling Anderson’s film, his first role since Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” for Apple in 2023.

Warner Bros. doesn’t have a strong slate of top-shelf franchise entries to trot out this year. “Superman,” the lone DC Studios film, is the culmination of DC co-chief and director James Gunn being hired to figure out a more streamlined approach to Warners’ flagship superhero brand, as the DC Extended Universe petered out to diminishing returns in 2023.

Last year’s “Joker: Folie à Deux” didn’t exactly right the ship, generating a fraction of its 2019 predecessor’s billion-dollar success, with a budget about twice the size of “Mickey 17.” This leaves “The Batman” as the one remaining tangible DC film series before Gunn’s DC Universe proves itself, but the next “Batman” to star Robert Pattinson won’t be out until 2027. “Mickey 17” was Pattinson’s first leading role since his successful turn as Bruce Wayne in 2022.

What the studio does have in 2025 is a return to more dormant, affordable franchises, such as “The Conjuring,” “Final Destination” and “Mortal Kombat,” rather than setting piles of money on fire to bring back “Fantastic Beasts.”

But before scrutinizing “Mickey 17” any further, the film must be put in the context of other cash gambles currently defining the film business.

Apple shelled out $200 million for “Killers,” not to mention the same amount for “Napoleon” the same year and “Argylle” last year. Apple reportedly spent as much as $300 million on “F1,” Joseph Kosinski’s “Top Gun: Maverick” follow-up that stars Brad Pitt, and is partnering with Warner Bros. to bring the film to theaters this summer, as Apple did with the likes of Paramount, Sony and Universal for the aforementioned movies.

Netflix’s “The Electric State,” its own $300 million production, hits the streamer Friday with no real theatrical release. Because that film is on Netflix, how it performs won’t be under the glare had it played in theaters.

“Captain America: Brave New World” wasn’t a promising start to Disney’s slate of Marvel films this year, which will see new entrant “Thunderbolts” and yet another reboot of “Fantastic Four” go next.

And let’s not forget the lead-up to Warners’ 2025 slate. Ex-MGM execs Pam Abdy and Mike De Luca were specifically tasked with bringing back top filmmaking talent to the studio, including “Mickey 17” director Bong Joon Ho, whose “Parasite” was the first foreign-language film to win best picture in 2019.

Warners investing this much in Bong for “Mickey 17” was simply the logical move to make in the wake of Christopher Nolan’s exit from Warners — and hardly an outlier.

After all, Universal didn’t hesitate to lock the Daniels directing duo in a five-year deal after “Everything Everywhere All at Once” set a new box office bar for A24, and that was ahead of its own Oscars sweep. And before Denis Villeneuve made “Dune” work for Warners as a new topline franchise, his own “Blade Runner 2049” failed to cross $100 million domestically on a $150 million budget.

Taking these chances is a must for Warners until the studio has revitalized itself with dependable franchise fare.