IMDb Reveals 2025’s Most Popular Films

According to IMDb, the most popular film of 2025 was James Gunn’s Superman.

IMDb determines its “most popular” titles by tracking what its 250 million global users are actually viewing and searching for. Essentially, the rankings show what movies and shows people were most interested in this year – whether big-budget hits or unexpected surprises.

Here is the full list of IMDB’s ten most popular films

According to IMDb, the year’s four most popular films were all released by Warner Bros.: Superman, Weapons, Sinners, and One Battle After Another. Warner Bros. also had the highest-grossing film in the U.S., A Minecraft Movie, though it didn’t make IMDb’s top four. The list also included films from Netflix, Apple, and Marvel. Interestingly, Thunderbolts generated more interest on IMDb than The Fantastic Four: First Steps, despite the latter earning significantly more at the box office.

IMDb claims their list reflects the movies everyone was obsessed with this year, constantly watching, searching for, and discussing. However, Google recently published its own list of top movie searches, and it looked quite different. Notably, Google’s most searched film, KPop Demon Hunters, isn’t on IMDb’s list at all. As a father of two daughters, I’m surprised KPop Demon Hunters didn’t make IMDb’s ‘most popular’ list – it’s a huge hit in our house!

IMDb revealed its list of the most popular TV shows, with HBO’s The White Lotus taking the top spot. It was followed by The Last of Us, Severance, Wednesday, Squid Game, Dexter: Resurrection, Monster, Dept. Q, Andor, and Black Mirror.

According to IMDb, Isabela Merced, who starred in Superman, was the most popular actor of the year. Following her were Aimee Lou Wood, Matthew Goode, Tom Cruise, Sydney Sweeney, Britt Lower, Sydney Chandler, Walton Goggins, David Corenswet, and Vanessa Kirby.

The 10 Most Confusing Movie Franchise Timelines

Evil Dead

As a huge horror fan, I always thought the Evil Dead series seemed simple enough on the surface. It started with Sam Raimi and Bruce Campbell’s low-budget, incredibly creepy cabin-in-the-woods film in 1981. Then, for the sequel, they basically… did the first movie again, but bigger and scarier! And the third film? Totally threw me for a loop – a medieval fantasy with Ash and those Deadites! So, yeah, maybe it’s not so straightforward after all.

Then came Fede Álvarez’s remake in 2013, which was way more focused on intense gore and less on the playful humor that Raimi and Campbell were known for. And just when you thought you had it figured out, Evil Dead Rise came out in 2023, seemingly unconnected to anything that came before. (Honestly, I’ve given up trying to place Ash vs. Evil Dead in the timeline!) I’ve started to think that this willingness to just go wild creatively is why the Evil Dead franchise is so consistently good – it’s rare to find a horror series with no truly weak entries. My advice? Just enjoy the ride and don’t try to overthink it!

The Fast and the Furious

If you’ve seen any of the Fast & Furious films, you’ll know the timeline isn’t always straightforward. What started as a single movie with a few sequels grew into a huge franchise, all because people enjoy watching exciting car chases. Tokyo Drift, the third film, created the first timeline issue, taking place after Fast & Furious 6 but before Furious 7. To watch the movies in the correct order, it’s best to go with: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 3, 7, 8, Hobbs & Shaw, 9, and 10. It seems a bit complex, but that’s typical for a series that frequently brings characters back from the dead!

Halloween

The Halloween movie series is famous for its incredibly complicated timeline. It began simply enough: Laurie Strode faced off against Michael Myers in the first Halloween, and their conflict continued in Halloween II, where it was revealed they were siblings. Halloween III: Season of the Witch tried something different, aiming for a series of standalone Halloween-themed horror stories, but fans wanted more Michael Myers. This led to a trilogy focusing on Michael hunting his niece and her son.

Halloween H20: 20 Years Later completely disregarded everything after Halloween II, pretending those sequels never happened. Halloween: Resurrection finished that storyline by killing off Laurie Strode, and the series was rebooted again in 2007 with Rob Zombie’s two films. In 2018, the franchise essentially started over again with a new Halloween that was a direct sequel to the original, ignoring everything in between (including the sibling reveal). That was followed by two more sequels, bringing that particular story arc to a close – at least for now.

Hellraiser

The Hellraiser franchise started simply enough, with the first three movies following a direct storyline. Then things got complicated. The fourth film, Hellraiser: Bloodline, jumped around in time – showing both the past and future – to explain how the puzzle box came to be and even tried to destroy Pinhead (yes, in space!). After that, six more sequels were made directly for home video, mostly without the creator Clive Barker’s input, and often weren’t even intended to be Hellraiser movies – Dimension Films just wanted to keep the rights to the series. Doug Bradley famously played Pinhead throughout the first eight films. Eventually, Clive Barker regained the rights in 2020, and a new Hellraiser film – a mix of reboot and sequel – arrived on Hulu in 2022, starring Jamie Clayton as Pinhead. It’s been quite a ride!

Insidious

The Insidious movies can be confusing! The first two films follow a couple (Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne) whose son is haunted by spirits. However, Insidious: Chapter 3 is a prequel, happening before the first two movies and featuring a new family. Insidious: The Last Key fits in between the third and first films, telling another ghost story. Finally, Insidious: The Red Door is a direct sequel to the second movie, bringing back the original cast. To watch them in order, you’d want to go with: Chapter 3, The Last Key, the first Insidious, the second Insidious, and then The Red Door.

The Mummy

As a big monster movie fan, I’ve always found The Mummy series a bit of a mess, honestly. It’s not that the movies are confusing in terms of what happens, but more that they keep getting restarted! It all began with the classic 1932 film, then a few sequels in the ’40s, and even a hilarious team-up with Abbott and Costello. After that, things went quiet for a while until Brendan Fraser and Rachel Weisz brought the mummy back to life in 1999 with a new trilogy. Those sequels weren’t as strong, and then they tried again with Tom Cruise in 2017, hoping to launch a whole universe of Universal Monsters. Sadly, that didn’t work out at all, and the project was scrapped. But don’t worry, they’re already planning another reboot, coming out in 2026! It’s just… a lot of mummies, you know?

Saw

The Saw movies made a big mistake by killing off the main villain, John Kramer (Jigsaw), after only three films. Even after his death in Saw III, the franchise continued with Saw IV, introducing a convoluted plot involving investigators solving clues left on cassette tapes. The next three movies focused on Mark Hoffman, Kramer’s assistant, who pretended to be a police officer investigating the crimes.

The seventh film, Saw 3D, was intended to be the end, but the series surprisingly returned in 2017 with Jigsaw, featuring yet another follower carrying on Jigsaw’s work. This was followed by the spinoff Spiral: From the Book of Saw in 2021, starring Chris Rock as a detective hunting a copycat killer. Finally, in 2023 with Saw X, the franchise went back to its roots, setting the film between the first and second movies and bringing the original Jigsaw back to life – something it arguably should have done all along.

Star Wars

Without its massive popularity, the Star Wars franchise would likely be considered a mess of unplanned sequels. The original film wasn’t intended to launch a series, but it did – leading to nine films in the core ‘Skywalker Saga,’ plus prequels, sequels, and spin-offs. The sheer number of additions – like Rogue One and Solo – is remarkable, and there are even more projects planned. Trying to keep track of all the movies and TV shows would be overwhelming, but fans’ demand for more Star Wars keeps the franchise expanding.

Terminator

For a long time, the Terminator movies kept their timeline fairly straightforward, despite involving time travel. The story centers on people from the future traveling to the past, either to protect individuals or to be hunted by advanced robots. While Terminator 2 actually takes place before the first Terminator film, Terminator 3 and Terminator Salvation are set afterward. Things got complicated with Terminator Genisys, which essentially restarted the series, ignoring all the sequels and creating a new version of the past. Terminator: Dark Fate then tried something similar, picking up directly after T2 and disregarding everything that followed, including Genisys.

X-Men

As a huge fan of the X-Men films, let me tell you, trying to keep the timeline straight is a nightmare! It started with the original trilogy – the first movie came out in 2000, and it wrapped up with X-Men: The Last Stand in 2006. Then, we got a series of Wolverine films that basically told his origin story twice, with a sequel that tied back to the main X-Men series. At the same time, Fox was also making prequel movies – X-Men: First Class showed us how Professor X and Magneto first met, and that led into Days of Future Past, Apocalypse, and Dark Phoenix, which gave us younger versions of the characters we loved. And don’t even get me started on how Deadpool and The New Mutants fit in! But honestly, with Disney now owning everything and bringing the X-Men into the MCU, I’m pretty sure all that complicated continuity is out the window anyway.

2025-12-08 21:57