Hollywood is having one of its best summers even before the pandemic, and that strong showing is on track to push annual box office revenue to over $10 billion for the first time in seven years.
The season runs from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, and has so far grossed $1.8 billion through Sunday. This is less than 2% below 2019 levels, and only about $30 million behind. Industry analysts pay close attention to this period, as it typically accounts for about 40% of the country’s annual box office gross.
“Summer box office numbers are extremely important,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at movie data company Rentrac. “This is really important in thinking about what the overall health of the industry is and how that impacts the entire year.”
What’s different about this summer is that it didn’t start with blockbuster action movies and superhero team-ups. Instead, the first blockbuster of the season is disney’s Following “The Devil Wears Prada 2” universal A24’s “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” two low-budget horror films. YouTube Creator turned filmmaker.
The remaining ticket sales provided further momentum. lions gate Michael Jackson’s biopic “Michael” was released in late April.
Together, these four films have contributed nearly $850 million to the domestic summer box office since early May, according to Rentrak data. Notably, this is roughly the same box office revenue as Disney and Marvel’s Avengers: Endgame in the same period in 2019.
This is also from the Pixar movie “Toy Story 5”.
disney
Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5,” which was released last week, provided an additional boost, achieving the series’ highest opening gross of $160 million.
A combination of several upside surprises helped the domestic box office beat expectations, setting a promising foundation for the second half of the year as the industry aims for pre-pandemic levels.
As of Sunday, domestic box office revenue for 2026 had reached $4.4 billion, about 15% shy of the $5.2 billion box office revenue for the same period in 2019.
Currently showing in theaters
Contributing to surprisingly strong ticket sales are films such as “Michael” and “Obsession.” Amazon MGM “Project Hail Mary” was released in March and has been doing well at the box office every week.
Title sales typically drop by 50% to 70% after a weekend release. However, these films saw weekly declines of 20% to 40%.
According to data from The Numbers, Obsession actually achieved an even rarer box office success, with ticket sales in theaters actually increasing by 39% and 14% in its second and third weekends in theaters, respectively.
This success shows that the film is gaining solid word of mouth from audiences, which is driving new moviegoers to theaters.
“It’s one thing after another,” said Alex DelVecchio, general manager of Rutgers Cinema in Piscataway, New Jersey. “I always said June 19th would be the year of the year, because June 19th would be six weeks in a row: Toy Story, Supergirl, Minions, Moana (The Odyssey), and Spider-Man.”
Dergarabedian said the combined efforts of these six films could reach $4.2 billion in summer box office revenue. Summer box office sales have topped $4 billion only once since 2019, thanks to the double efforts of Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” and Universal’s “Oppenheimer” in 2023, according to Rentrak data.
The metric would mark a return to a normal pace for the summer box office, which raked in more than $4 billion annually from 2013 to 2019, before the coronavirus shuttered movie theaters.
Barbie and Oppenheimer movie posters photographed outside Cinemark Summerdale 16 and XD in Summerdale, New Jersey in 2023.
Hannah Baier | Washington Post | Getty Images
Universal’s The Odyssey, directed by Christopher Nolan, is currently on track to gross more than $100 million in its opening weekend and is expected to benefit greatly from premium wide-format screenings.
sony’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, produced in conjunction with Disney’s Marvel Studios, could do even better, with some analysts predicting it will gross between $200 million and $250 million in its opening weekend.
“‘Spider-Man: Brand New Day’ may have the biggest opening weekend of the year,” Dergarabedian said. “And it opens on July 31st. What does that mean for August? Well, because it’s going to add and contribute a lot of box office revenue in that month. Then you have fall and the holiday period set up, and I don’t think it’s really going to slow down that much.”
