Rentrak estimated on Monday that the 2026 summer season at the North American box has become the all-time biggest by a slender margin as a projected $4.761bn overtakes the $4.756bn milestone established in 2013.
The box office analyst will release final data on Tuesday and said the final four-day Labor Day weekend would bring in between $117.8m and $118.2m.
The summer period spanning May 1 to September 7 (130 days compared to 123 in 2013) was powered by Columbia Pictures’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Universal’s The Odyssey, and Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 5, as well as a raft of “original” films.
Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened on July 31 and at time of writing (September 7) stood at $923.3m to rank by some way as the franchise leader and second in the all-time North American box office pantheon behind 2015’s Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens on an unadjusted $936.7m.
Spidey will overtake Star Wars certainly by the end of the upcoming weekend, if not before, to become the all-time biggest release in North America, and crossed every $100m multiple at the box office in record time, reaching $900m in 36 days. (It ranks as the number three global release of all time on $2.4bn and counting.)
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey on $589.1m is the second-highest earner of the summer and the year so far after its July 17 debut. It is also the highest-grossing “original” of the year to date, which is to say it is not a sequel, prequel, spin-off or reboot of an existing tentpole – even though it is adapted from Homer’s epic poem that came into being more than 2,700 years ago.
All four summer months generated more than $1bn each
Rentrak noted that for the first time, each of the four summer months generated more than $1bn: May on $1.069bn; June on $1.079bn; July on $1.186bn; and August on $1.276bn. Last month produced the highest-grossing August of all time as Spider-Man: Brand New Day and The Odyssey gathered steam. This was only the third time box office in August has crossed $1bn (unadjusted) after 2016 on $1.02bn and 2014 on $1.017bn.
Toy Story 5 finished third for the summer and opened on June 19 en route to its franchise-leading $479.9m. Disney executives used the love for all things Pixar to re-release Cars on its 20th anniversary over Labor Day and it ranked sixth over the weekend on an estimated $6.2m.
Placing fourth for the summer on $263.5m was one of the big stories of the season, Focus Features’ Obsession. YouTuber Curry Barker’s horror reportedly cost less than $1m to make and was acquired by the studio one year ago out of Toronto for $15m in a near-worldwide deal after the well-received Midnight Madness premiere. It has gone on to earn more than $509m worldwide.
The success of Obsession and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms (May 29) at A24, which on $197.5m became the company’s biggest hit of all time (it is also A24’s biggest global hit on $394.1m) has sent Hollywood into paroxysms of delight and speculative investment based on mimicry, a common Hollywood strategy. Accordingly, the studios, agencies and production companies have piled in and struck deals with YouTube creators in the hopes of striking gold again and again.
Time will tell if there is enough here to turn creators-turned-feature filmmakers into cash cows; the success of Obsession and Backrooms perhaps point more broadly to a desire among audiences for fresh stories and voices. But they have to be top-notch or else box office falls backs into the abyss as demanding audiences turn to other entertainment options.
A24 had a mighty summer and on top of Backrooms released Olivia Wilde’s The Invite. The four-hander comedy struck a blow for smaller films, opening on June 26 and going on to gross $25.9m (and more than $55m worldwide) as crowds turned out to see Penélope Cruz, Seth Rogen, Edward Norton, and Wilde.
Kudos must also go to Michael in fifth place over the summer. The first part of Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic directed by Antoine Fuqua opened on April 24 and played into the summer to finish on $372.3m in North America and just over $1bn worldwide. Universal Pictures International took the biopic to $650m outside North America for Lionsgate’s first $1bn global release. Disney/20th Century Studios showed that a well-made sequel with in-built demand will always deliver and so it was with The Devil Wears Prada 2 at number six on $220.6m (and $692m worldwide – more than double the 2006 original’s $327m final gross.)
Franchise fatigue
There were flops: Star Wars: The Mandalorian And Grogu (May 22) earned $177.7m ($345.4m worldwide) through Disney/Lucasfilm and is the lowest-grossing live-action Star Wars release; Supergirl (June 26) took $72.4m ($126.4m worldwide) for Warner Bros/DC and is one of DC’s lowest-grossing live-action releases ever; the live-action Moana grossed $126.2m ($315.5m worldwide) through Disney; and Minions & Monsters earned $183.2m ($518.1m worldwide), which in isolation hardly looks like a crisis but does not compare well to 2015’s Minions and 2022’s Minions: The Rise Of Gru, which both earned well over $300m in North America and around $1bn worldwide.
The hope is that the message will not be lost on studio executives that franchise fatigue will kick in if a feature is either not good enough or better suited for streaming. The Mandalorian And Grogu was originally conceived as Season 4 of the Disney+ series.
On the independent / smaller film side apart from The Invite, Bleecker Street and LD Entertainment found success with Hadestown: The Musical, which on $20.7m became the highest-grossing capture of a stage performance.
There were casualties, among them Neon’s release of returning enfant terrible Nicolas Winding Refn’s Cannes entry Her Private Hell on a little over $912,000; Black Bear’s The Rivals Of Amziah King starring Matthew McConaughey in a well-reviewed film that has scraped past $2m; and Gregg Araki’s Sundance hit I Want Your Sex that stars Olivia Wilde and managed $1.4m through Magnolia.
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