As the world kept heating up and temperatures hit worrying highs, most of us chose to escape to the cinema this summer. It offered some relief for audiences, but even more so for the industry itself, with the season crossing the $4 billion mark—the biggest since 2019, up 20% from last year. There were the usual hits (Spider-Man never fails), but also unexpected breakouts (we couldn’t stop talking about Obsession) and surprising flops (are kids finally tired of the Minions?).
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So, after a season with incredible highs and deep lows, what can Hollywood learn?
Spider-Man is still the king of Hollywood
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Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Photograph: Ent-movie/Alamy
Just when critics are ready to declare the superhero genre truly dead, a film comes along that quickly proves them wrong. Last summer, the weak performances of Thunderbolts ($382 million worldwide) and The Fantastic Four: First Steps ($521 million worldwide) were somewhat balanced by a decent start for James Gunn’s rebooted Superman ($624 million worldwide), which quieted concerns for a while. But that was still a modest win for a type of film that used to see huge success, with the last superhero movie to cross the $1 billion mark being 2024’s sarcastic and self-aware Deadpool & Wolverine. Alarms went off across Hollywood again this summer when DC’s Supergirl crashed and burned in June (a disappointing $126 million worldwide against an estimated $180 million budget), but like clockwork, a miss was followed by a hit—and this time, it was on a truly epic scale.
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As July came to a close, Spider-Man: Brand New Day premiered with massive numbers, pulling in nearly $1 billion globally on its opening weekend and now sitting at over $2 billion total. It’s easily the biggest film of the year so far, the second biggest superhero movie ever, and the fourth biggest film of all time, overtaking Titanic. It’s a clear reason to celebrate, but it comes with some big caveats. Spider-Man has long been a trailblazing superhero character that seems immune to wider market trends. Sam Raimi’s 2002 original was the first film ever to make over $100 million in its opening domestic weekend; even the weakest sequel (2014’s The Amazing Spider-Man 2) still made over $700 million. Spider-Man: No Way Home became the highest-grossing film during the pandemic, and now as Captain America, Supergirl, and Thunderbolts struggle, Spider-Man remains a major draw.
Marvel will surely see this as a good sign for Avengers: Doomsday, hitting theaters in December (a film with more riding on it than almost anything else this year), but Spider-Man’s success continues to be his alone.
Gen Z horror profit margins are scary good
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Inde Navarrette and Michael Johnston in Obsession. Photograph: Courtesy of Focus Features
Horror has long been Hollywood’s favorite genre for one simple business reason: its profit margin. These films are usually cheap to make and don’t rely on expensive actors, so even a flop rarely leads to a massive, superhero-sized loss. But this summer’s scariest hits were even cheaper and even more successful than the genre typically sees, and both were seen as proof of a changing of the guard—a new generation of filmmakers taking over.
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While some of the hype around the success of Obsession and Backrooms, both directed by twentysomethings trained on YouTube, got a bit overblown (it’s not quite the new New Hollywood movement just yet), there was something genuinely exciting about seeing two small films outgross much bigger summer releases. Obsession came first with a budget of just $750,000, and after a modest opening weekend, word of mouth pushed it to one of the most unlikely box office runs in recent memory.In recent memory, it was the first film since E.T. to earn more money for three weekends in a row. By the end of its run, it had made $505 million worldwide, becoming the sixth highest-grossing horror film ever and the most successful original movie of the 2020s. Shortly after, A24’s less obviously crowd-pleasing horror film Backrooms, based on the popular web series, became the company’s biggest hit ever, earning $394 million globally on a $10 million budget. It also made director Kane Parsons the youngest filmmaker ever to open at number one.
As many people quickly pointed out, the success of two horror films in a market already full of them wasn’t a sign of some major shift (imagine if two low-budget comedies did the same), but it did feel like a meaningful moment. It energized a Gen Z audience who could feel these films were made for them by people their own age, while still appealing to older viewers. The wins also stood out during a mostly weak season for horror elsewhere, with more traditional releases like Paramount’s Passenger ($31 million worldwide), Hokum ($25 million worldwide), Eli Roth’s Ice Cream Man ($6 million worldwide), and even Evil Dead Burn ($72 million worldwide, down from Evil Dead Rise’s $147 million) all looking small next to these two hits. Studios will likely learn the wrong lessons, already snapping up rights to any old internet horror story they can find, but ideally this encourages more risks and a few broken rules. Hopefully next time it happens in a different genre.
For franchises, too much is a bad thing
Dwayne Johnson at the Moana world premiere. Photograph: Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic
The fading interest in all things Marvel, Star Wars, and DC should have taught Hollywood executives a lot, but the biggest lesson should be about the value of scarcity. The more audiences were given of once carefully managed and commercially unbeatable brands, on both big and small screens, the less they felt the need to keep coming back—a clear case of too much being a bad thing.
This partly explains why several of this summer’s biggest films underperformed: sequels, remakes, or spin-offs rushed out before audiences had time to miss them. The Despicable Me/Minions franchise had become Hollywood’s most reliable long-running animated series, with over $6 billion in global earnings, and the last two films in both connected storylines nearly hit $1 billion each. But after six titles, the most recent in 2024, fatigue set in. This past July’s Minions & Monsters has only made $513 million so far, and its domestic total is nearly half of what the last Minions film earned. Last summer might have seen a promising start for yet another Superman reboot, but in a strangely overconfident move—given how shaky the superhero genre is—DC rushed out its Supergirl spin-off less than a year later. That film bombed, making $126 million, a disastrous result that means Warner Bros. is set to lose close to $120 million and has immediately killed any chance of sequels. As for The Mandalorian and Grogu, it was the first Star Wars film since 2019, but in those seven years Disney flooded fans with nearly 25 seasons of live-action and animated shows. Returning to the big screen with what felt like an extended episode of an existing series led to a disappointing $345 million worldwide—even less than the ridiculed spin-off Solo: A Star Wars Story made in 2018.
And perhaps the most surprising flop of all was Disney’s live-action Moana, which has only just crossed $308 million globally on a $250 million budget. The original animated film made $687 million in 2016 and became a huge hit on Disney+, big enough to turn the follow-up from a streaming miniseries into a theatrical release, one that earned over $1 billion at the end of 2024. While that made a third film inevitable, it also made the live-action remake feel unnecessary and outdated—just a piece of fan service.
At the same time, the franchises that did well this summer gave fans something different.They had been missing something for a long time. Sequels that played on nostalgia were a big draw this summer. The Devil Wears Prada 2 pulled in an impressive $692 million worldwide—more than double what the 2006 original made—while Scary Movie climbed to $231 million globally, nearly three times what the last sequel earned in 2013. Kids also flocked to Toy Story 5, which made $1.1 billion, the highest total in that series so far (the previous film came out in 2019). Audiences showed this summer that they were happy to come out in big numbers again and again, but there still had to be a real reason to do so.
Christopher Nolan is now bigger than Steven Spielberg
The Odyssey is Christopher Nolan’s biggest hit to date. Photograph: Landmark Media/Alamy
As brands started to take over from A-list actors and directors, we lost a generation of stars who could be counted on to draw crowds, both in front of and behind the camera. To be fair, the director side has always been a smaller group, but until recently it was hard to name many modern equivalents to a Quentin Tarantino or a James Cameron. However, with the success of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in 2023 and then Ryan Coogler’s Sinners last year, it seemed like we had two newer filmmakers who had finally proven themselves without relying on superhero franchises. This summer, Nolan proved it again—and then some—with his biggest hit yet, an epic adaptation of The Odyssey.
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It has now crossed $1.5 billion worldwide, making it the highest-grossing R-rated movie ever and Nolan’s biggest hit to date. Sure, it was based on known material, but Homer wasn’t likely the main draw. Even though it was packed with stars who appealed to different generations, none of them could single-handedly drive a hit of that size. Nolan had already shown he could turn a talky drama about the atom bomb into a $972 million smash, and now, at a time when even Gladiator II couldn’t revive the swords-and-sandals genre, he’s found another unlikely summer success.
At the same time, arguably the most famous commercial director alive, Steven Spielberg, stumbled with Disclosure Day. His original sci-fi thriller made a disappointing $241 million worldwide on a $115 million budget (reports suggested it needed closer to $300 million just to break even). It seemed like an easier sell in many ways—Spielberg plus aliens—but it just didn’t connect with audiences. After similarly weak returns for The Fabelmans and West Side Story, it looks like the director’s golden touch might be fading, or maybe it’s just time to pass the baton. Similarly, at the end of the season, another older, once-reliable hitmaker, Ridley Scott, faced another flop with the post-apocalyptic drama The Dog Stars. That film had a $110 million budget but couldn’t even pass $20 million in its global opening weekend. Maybe that will push both directors to try something different next time.
Original comedies have no one laughing
Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner in One Night Only. Photograph: Nicole Rivelli/Universal Pictures/AP
It was supposed to be another Anyone But You, but Will Gluck’s follow-up romcom One Night Only ended up being anything but. It was meant to be a calculated sleeper hit, but it failed to wake up its target younger audience. His Glen Powell-Sydney Sweeney pairing was a surprise hit at the end of 2023, turning a weak opening into a long-lasting success ($7 million grew into $88 million domestically, which ballooned to $220 million worldwide) and became the biggest R-rated comedy in nearly a decade. But with a move from winter to summer, known leads swapped for relative unknowns, and a bizarre dystopian premise (what if sex was only legal for one night?), lightning didn’t strike twice. After almost three weeks in release, the film has only crossed a damp $20 million worldwide.
The failure of Sex Purge wasn’t a big surprise to anyone paying attention (how a 30-second TV spot was supposed to explain that setup—I can’t quite grasp it, but it happened during another summer when original comedies struggled to find an audience, highlighting a growing worry that the genre is now mostly seen as safe only for streaming. Wider releases like The Breadwinner ($20m), Spa Weekend ($7.6m), and I Love Boosters ($9.7m) flopped, as did mid-sized attempts like Power Ballad ($3.4m), Stop! That! Train! ($4.3m), and Gail Daughtry and the Celebrity Sex Pass ($1.4m). While nostalgia worked for Scary Movie and Prada, Super Troopers 3 opened to less than a third of what the second film earned.
There was one bright spot, though how bright it really was is still up for debate. At this year’s Sundance, Olivia Wilde’s crowd-pleasing couples comedy The Invite sparked an intense bidding war, one of the few sure bets at a festival struggling through another weak year. Despite a higher offer for a streaming release (which Wilde later called a “bribe”), a theatrical rollout was chosen as Paramount and A24 picked it up for an estimated $12m. By the end of summer, it had made about $25m in the US and $51m worldwide—a positive result, but given the buzz, reviews, star power, and wide release, it wasn’t quite the big win some expected (strong awards prospects should help make it an even better investment by year’s end).
Studios are still aggressively buying up buzzy comedy scripts, so they won’t disappear anytime soon (though next time the writer of Sex Purge comes knocking, maybe keep that door shut). Still, without a known brand attached, comedy remains a risky bet in theaters. Like horror, it probably needs a Gen Z boost to survive. This article was corrected on 1 September 2026. The caption for the photo accompanying the entry for The Odyssey mistakenly identified stuntwoman Devyn Dalton as actor Matt Damon.
Frequently Asked Questions
Here is a list of FAQs about the 2026 Summer Box Office covering everything from basic definitions to advanced industry analysis
General Beginner Questions
1 What exactly is the Summer box office and why does it matter
The summer box office is the total money made from movie tickets between the first Friday of May and Labor Day It matters because it usually accounts for 40 of the entire years ticket sales in North America Studios release their biggest blockbusters here to capture families and kids on school break
2 Was Summer 2026 considered a good or bad year for movies
It was a mixed bag Overall revenue was slightly down compared to 2025 but it wasnt a disaster The main story was a huge gap between a few massive hits and a graveyard of expensive flops The middle class of movies disappeared
3 What were the biggest hits of Summer 2026
The undeniable winners were Starfall Jurassic Dawn and The Last Lighthouse These three films accounted for nearly 30 of all summer ticket sales
4 Which movies were the biggest misses
The most notable flops were Neon City and The Gilded Age Both had huge marketing budgets but failed to attract audiences on opening weekend
Analysis Trends
5 What is the single biggest trend that defined the 2026 summer season
Franchise fatigue combined with Originality panic Audiences stayed home for sequels they felt theyd already seen but they also ignored original highconcept films that cost too much to make The only originals that worked were lowbudget horror films
6 Why did so many bigbudget sequels underperform
There are three reasons
1 Poor word of mouth Early screenings and social media buzz were negative
2 Lack of novelty The trailers looked like rehashes of earlier films in the series
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