Global Culture Sees Strong Growth: Box Office Soars 15.5% Alongside Bestselling Books and Chart-Topping Music in First Half of 2025

The cultural landscape has experienced a dynamic and commercially successful first half of 2025, with significant growth observed across key sectors including film, literature, and music.

Spanning the period from January 1 to June 29, 2025, the domestic box office, encompassing U.S. ticket sales, recorded a total of $4.1 billion. This represents a substantial 15.5% increase when compared to the $3.5 billion grossed during the same timeframe in 2024, according to data released by Comscore. A particularly robust performance was noted during the spring moviegoing season in April and May 2025, which saw ticket sales rise dramatically, grossing a remarkable 90% more than the corresponding two-month period in the previous year.

Leading the domestic box office charts for the year to date is “A Minecraft Movie,” which has accumulated $423,941,548 in the U.S. Meanwhile, on the global stage, the Chinese blockbuster “Ne Zha 2” stands out as the highest-grossing film, commanding a staggering $1.9 billion worldwide. Other films that have performed strongly in the domestic market include “Lilo & Stitch,” which surpassed $400M in ticket sales, “Sinners,” exceeding $278M, and “Captain America: Brave New World,” which has grossed over $200M.

Globally, “A Minecraft Movie” also features prominently among the top earners with total receipts surpassing $954M, closely followed by “Lilo & Stitch” with over $945M in worldwide gross.

The literary market has also demonstrated significant vitality. Based on data compiled by Circana BookScan, Suzanne Collins’ novel “Sunrise on the Reaping,” released in March 2025, has emerged as the best-selling fiction book of the year so far, with an impressive 1,667,012 copies sold. It is closely trailed by Rebecca Yarros’ “Onyx Storm (Deluxe Limited Edition),” which has sold 1,614,239 units. In the nonfiction category, John Green’s work, “Everything Is Tuberculosis,” holds the top position as the best-selling book in its genre. Other notable fiction titles achieving strong sales figures include Frieda McFadden’s “The Crash,” Emily Henry’s “Great Big Beautiful Life,” and Lauren Roberts’ “Fearless.”

In the realm of popular music, new releases have also captured significant attention and dominated the charts. Among the songs released in 2025 that have reached the coveted No. 1 spot on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, Sabrina Carpenter’s track “Manchild” has proven to be the biggest hit in terms of streaming numbers, accumulating over 126 million Spotify streams. Other songs that have topped the Billboard charts include Travis Scott’s single “4×4” and the collaboration between Morgan Wallen and Tate McRae titled “What I Want.”

The collective performance across film, literature, and music during the first six months of 2025 paints a positive picture of the cultural industries’ health and consumer engagement. The significant increase in box office revenue, coupled with robust sales figures for leading books and strong streaming performance for major music releases, underscores a period of notable success and sets an optimistic tone for the remainder of the year.