The People Platform's Cinema Measurement Service released its full 2025 cinema report on March 28, 2026, and the headline figure is hard to ignore: more than 651 million tickets were sold across all films released during the year, a 9% increase over 2024's 598 million. What makes that number particularly significant is not its size but its composition. According to the report, admissions grew faster than box office revenue, which was up just 1% year over year. More people went to the movies. They paid less, on average, to do so.

That divergence between ticket volume and gross revenue is not a sign of weakness. It reflects a structural shift in what drove demand - families, value pricing, matinees, and children's tickets pulled the admissions curve upward while keeping average ticket prices moderate. According to the report, "the truest indicator of momentum is admissions," and by that measure, 2025 was the strongest year for theatrical exhibition in some time.

For the marketing community, the data carries implications that go well beyond the entertainment sector. Cinema audiences represent one of the few media environments where attention is essentially guaranteed, where demographic composition can be verified against actual ticket purchases rather than modeled probabilities, and where the viewing experience is shared rather than solitary. As cross-platform measurement remains fragmented across streaming and digital channels, cinema offers a comparatively clean signal.

The admissions-revenue split

The gap between the 9% admissions growth and 1% revenue growth deserves specific attention. According to The People Platform's analysis, family-targeted films dominated the top of the box office, "helping drive volume even as average ticket prices moderated." Parents buying multiple tickets per household - often at reduced children's rates or matinee prices - generate high admission counts per transaction while contributing proportionally less to gross revenue than a single adult paying full price for an evening screening.

This dynamic reshapes how the economics of family filmmaking should be evaluated. A studio releasing a PG-rated animated sequel that sells 35 million tickets at an average of $9.50 generates different revenue than an adult thriller selling 20 million tickets at $13. But from an audience-reach perspective, the family film has touched more households, more demographic segments, and, critically, more of the parents who control household spending across categories far beyond entertainment.

MPA rating distribution

The 2025 admissions split by MPA rating shows PG films capturing 38% of total admissions - the largest single category. PG-13 titles followed at 32%, with R-rated films accounting for 28%. G-rated films and unrated titles each held just 1%. According to the report, PG's dominance reflects its status as "a family-driven business," anchored by parents with children under 12 and widened by franchise strength and nostalgia.

The 28% share for R-rated films sits, according to the report, "on par with historical averages of around 25-30%." This consistency is notable. Predictions of family-film dominance crowding out adult content did not fully materialise. The market absorbed both categories simultaneously, which matters for studios making greenlight decisions and for brands evaluating cinema advertising environments.

The top 10 and what lies beneath

Lilo & Stitch led all titles with 41.1 million tickets sold, representing 6.3% of total annual admissions. A Minecraft Movie followed at 38.9 million (6.0%), and Zootopia 2 came third at 33.5 million (5.1%). Wicked: For Good placed fourth with 31.7 million admissions despite, according to the report, a late-year release. Jurassic World: Rebirth (25.7 million), Superman (24.8 million), Sinners (20.8 million), How to Train Your Dragon (19.8 million), Avatar: Fire and Ash (18.7 million), and The Fantastic Four: First Steps (18.7 million) completed the top 10.

Together, those 10 films accounted for 42% of all admissions. PG and PG-13 titles made up 9 of the 10, with 90% of top-10 admissions coming from those two rating categories.

But the story does not end at rank 10. According to the report, titles ranked 11 through 20 contributed an additional 17% of admissions. That group included Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning, Captain America: Brave New World, F1: The Movie, Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba Infinity Castle, Final Destination: Bloodlines, and Dog Man, among others. The remaining 41% of admissions came from films ranked 21 and beyond. This distribution matters for media planners: the top 10 is not the whole market, and mid-tier releases sustain weekly audience traffic that exhibitors depend on. The "mid-tier is broken" narrative, circulated repeatedly over the past several years, is not supported by these figures.

Sinners as a case study

Among the 2025 releases, Sinners merits separate treatment. The R-rated Warner Bros. film opened at number two in April 2025. It climbed to number one in its second weekend. It remained in the top 10 for eight consecutive weeks. It finished seventh for the full year with 20.8 million tickets sold and subsequently received a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations. According to the report, this trajectory was "sustained by organic buzz, not awards press."

The commercial durability of Sinners without front-loaded marketing spend challenges assumptions that have governed studio release strategy for years. Wide-opening weekends have been treated as make-or-break events because audience acquisition costs spike at launch and decay rapidly afterward. A film that climbs rather than falls in its second week, and sustains for two months, operates differently. It suggests audiences discovered the film through peer recommendation rather than marketing saturation. Whether that model is repeatable remains an open question, but the data establishes that it happened once, in 2025, at meaningful scale.

Gender and age composition

According to The People Platform's measurement data, the overall 2025 cinema audience was 51% male and 49% female - nearly even. That split, however, varies substantially by rating category. PG films skewed female at 55%, reflecting the role of mothers in driving attendance for younger children. PG-13 films leaned male at 57%, consistent with the action and franchise content that dominates that category. R-rated films were 52% male and 48% female.

Within age and gender segments, females aged 18-34 represented the single largest audience segment across all admissions. Males aged 18-34 followed closely. For PG films, the female 18-34 segment accounted for 27% of admissions, with males aged 2-17 at 14% and females 2-17 at 15% - confirming the mother-plus-child household dynamic that drives family film economics.

Even within the PG category, individual franchise behavior differed. According to the report, Lilo & Stitch "skewed toward a younger female audience," while A Minecraft Movie "drew a notably stronger parent audience, likely reflecting nostalgia among original game players." Zootopia 2 attracted more boys proportionally than Lilo & Stitch did. Three films with the same rating, the same general audience category, and meaningfully different demographic compositions. For brands buying cinema advertising, that distinction matters as much as the top-line admissions figure.

The films with the highest concentration of male audiences aged 18-34 were all R-rated: Marty Supreme, Den of Thieves 2: Pantera, and 28 Years Later, followed by F1: The Movie (PG-13) and Mickey 17. This segment is consistently difficult to reach through traditional digital and television channels. As streaming measurement evolves with integrations across platforms and advertisers seek verified reach against hard-to-find demographics, cinema's ability to deliver verified male 18-34 attendance data may become a more prominent part of media planning conversations.

What the data means for media planning

The report was shared with PPC Land on March 28, 2026, by Alyssa Bourne-Peters of The Marketing Cloud, the parent company of The People Platform. The People Platform's Cinema Measurement Service draws its data from actual ticket sales rather than survey panels or modeled estimates, which gives the demographic breakdowns an unusual degree of precision. It is not a representation of who might have gone to see a film - it is a record of who actually bought a ticket.

That methodological distinction has value for marketers operating in an environment where audience measurement confidence remains low across television and video formats. The marketing industry has spent years debating the accuracy of cross-platform reach measurement, with deduplicated metrics only recently becoming standardised across some streaming and digital environments. Cinema starts from a different position: transaction-level verification.

The PG category's 38% admissions share also affects how brands think about family audiences. Parents with children under 12 - the core PG audience - are household decision-makers across categories including financial products, travel, grocery, automotive, and home goods. Cinema delivers them in an attention-guaranteed environment, often alongside the children who influence many of those purchase decisions. First-party data strategies have become central to digital advertising planning; cinema admissions data represents a form of first-party verification that does not exist in most other media.

The 2026 outlook

According to the report, North American forecasts suggest approximately a 10% increase from 2025, potentially reaching $9.8 to $9.9 billion in domestic box office gross - which would make it the strongest year since before the pandemic. The release calendar for 2026 includes The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Toy Story 5, Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Supergirl, Scream 7, Resident Evil, and The Devil Wears Prada 2, among others. Carry-over from late 2025 releases including Zootopia 2 and Avatar: Fire and Ash is expected to fuel early 2026 totals before new titles arrive.

For the marketing community, a 2026 box office at that scale means a cinema advertising environment with substantially more inventory and audience volume than has been available in recent years. As Nielsen's 2026 upfront planning data shows streaming commanding 66.7% of ad-supported TV time among adults 18-49, cinema retains a distinct position as a non-skippable, high-attention, demographically verifiable channel. The audience composition data in The People Platform's report provides the kind of specificity - by title, by rating, by age and gender - that media planners need to make those comparisons credibly.

Sarah Barasch, SVP of Strategy and Client Growth at The People Platform, is the contact listed on the report, available at thepeopleplatform.com.

Timeline

  • 2024 - US theaters sold 598 million tickets across all 2025 baseline (2024 comparison figure), per The People Platform Cinema Measurement Service
  • April 2025 - Sinners opens at number two at the domestic box office
  • April 2025 (week 2) - Sinners climbs to number one in its second weekend
  • Throughout 2025 - Sinners remains in the top 10 for eight consecutive weeks
  • May 2025 - Lilo & Stitch releases; goes on to lead 2025 admissions with 41.1 million tickets
  • 2025 (full year) - A Minecraft Movie sells 38.9 million tickets; Zootopia 2 sells 33.5 million
  • Late 2025 - Wicked: For Good releases; sells 31.7 million tickets despite a late-year entry
  • Full year 2025 - Over 651 million tickets sold across all 2025 releases, up 9% from 2024; box office revenue up just 1% year over year
  • 2025 (Oscar cycle) - Sinners earns a record-breaking 16 Oscar nominations
  • March 28, 2026 - The Marketing Cloud's The People Platform releases its Cinema Report 2025, "Lights, Camera, Packed House"; report shared with PPC Land
  • 2026 forecast - North American box office projected to rise approximately 10% over 2025, potentially reaching $9.8-$9.9 billion domestic gross

Related coverage on PPC Land

Summary

Who: The People Platform, a division of The Marketing Cloud, published the Cinema Report 2025 based on its Cinema Measurement Service. The report was shared with PPC Land on March 28, 2026, by Alyssa Bourne-Peters, a representative of The Marketing Cloud. Sarah Barasch, SVP of Strategy and Client Growth at The People Platform, is listed as the primary contact.

What: The report documents full-year 2025 theatrical admissions data drawn from actual ticket sales across all 2025 releases. Key findings include 651 million tickets sold (up 9% from 598 million in 2024), admissions outpacing revenue growth (which was up just 1%), PG films capturing 38% of admissions, females aged 18-34 constituting the single largest audience segment, and Sinners achieving unusual commercial durability by climbing from number two to number one in its second weekend and remaining in the top 10 for eight consecutive weeks. The report also projects approximately 10% domestic growth in 2026.

When: The data covers all films released during calendar year 2025. The report was published and shared on March 28, 2026.

Where: The analysis covers the North American theatrical market. The 2026 forecast specifically addresses domestic North American box office, projecting a potential total of $9.8-$9.9 billion.

Why: The report exists to provide the entertainment industry - studios, exhibitors, media buyers, and marketers - with granular, transaction-verified audience data that can inform greenlight decisions, marketing strategy, media planning, and audience targeting. For the broader marketing community, the data provides a demographically precise picture of who actually attended cinemas in 2025, by film, by rating, and by age and gender segment - information that carries value well beyond the entertainment sector.

Share this article
The link has been copied!