This year’s summer box office has already well passed last year’s. After this weekend, it has surpassed $4 billion, passing the 2023 “Barbenheimer” year ($4.039 billion), and August just started. Thanks to Spider-Man, The Odyssey, Toy Story 5, and many other successes, the 2026 summer box office is going to be comparable to the pre-pandemic levels of 2018 and 2019. Theatrical grosses are less than a billion away from the entirety of 2022, and they are over half a billion over the pace of 2023, the best year the box office has had since the pandemic. We still aren’t back to the $11 billion run from 2015-19, but a chance to hit $10 billion for the first time since then shows that the theatrical experience is on the rise and not going away anytime soon.
King of the Crop: Spider-Man: Brand New Day Continues Its Epic Run
When the dust cleared from the weekend into Monday last week, Spider-Man: Brand New Day emerged as the all-time champion when it comes to opening weekends. Sunday morning, it was about $2.5 million behind Avengers: Endgame. The final numbers on Monday revealed them to be nearly $3 million ahead. Absolutely extraordinary. Now it has become just the eighth film ever to have a second weekend over $100 million. Your top 10 list for sophomore weekends is as follows:
Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($149.2 million)
Avengers: Endgame ($147.3 million)
Spider-Man: Brand New Day ($144.5 million)
Avengers: Infinity War ($114.7 million)
Black Panther ($111.6 million)
Jurassic World ($106.5 million)
Marvel’s The Avengers ($103.0 million)
Inside Out 2 ($101.2 million)
Deadpool & Wolverine ($96.8 million)
Barbie ($93.0 million)
Any placement on this list is impressive. Third is pretty darn good. Let’s keep the lists going. Here is where Brand New Day ranks among films after 10 days of release:
Spider-Man: Brand New Day ($655.1 million)
Avengers: Endgame ($621.2 million)
Star Wars: The Force Awakens ($540.0 million)
Spider-Man: No Way Home ($470.3 million)
Avengers: Infinity War ($453.1 million)
Black Panther ($403.6 million)
Jurassic World ($402.8 million)
Deadpool & Wolverine ($395.3 million)
Marvel’s The Avengers ($373.0 million)
Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($368.1 million)
Spider-Man: No Way Home fell 67.5% to $84.5 million during the second holiday season of the pandemic. The Force Awakens fell 39.8% to what is still the best second weekend ever. The watch is on to see if Brand New Day ultimately passes the Star Wars film to become the all-time champ or even makes a run to become the first film to pass a cool billion at the domestic box office. Avengers: Endgame fell off the pace of Force Awakens by its third weekend — $18.5 million behind. Brand New Day is going to continue to eat through August and is headed, at least, for the $850-900 million range. In only 10 days, it has jumped into the top 20 films of all-time globally with $1.67 billion, just behind Inside Out 2’s $1.698 billion, which is 10th all time. Brand New Day should be there on Monday.
Tales of the Top 10: The Odyssey Crosses $1 Billion, One Night Only Leads New Releases in Third
We’re now on Day 24 of The Odyssey watch. Its $31.5 million is the 10th-best fourth weekend ever, bringing its total up to $461.1 million, which itself is the 18th-best 24-day total ever. That’s still well ahead of The Dark Knight’s pace, which had $441.6 million at this point after a $26.1 million fourth. The Odyssey should definitely become Christopher Nolan’s highest-grossing movie to date on the domestic side. It already passed The Dark Knight Rises’ $1.084 billion on the global scale. The epic is now at $1.1 billion. We’re looking at a final domestic gross between $560-580 million right now.
For all the cries of the death of comedies in theaters, how many will lament when one as poorly reviewed as One Night Only is one of the rare entries into the genre we are getting this year. After The Devil Wears Prada 2, Scary Movie, and the recent attendance for The Invite, how many can you name from 2026? Sure we have had laughs in animated films and dark laughs in Obsession and The Drama. But after that, its basically Solo Mio, The Breadwinner, and You, Me & Tuscany. Heck, people did not even show up for Jackass: Best & Last. Now comes Will Gluck’s Purge-like dystopian-adjacent rom-com about people not able to have pre-marital sex 364 days out of the year; 365 on a leap year. It’s currently at 48% on the Tomatometer. It opened to only $5.7 million. Less than Jackass. Less than Universal’s You, Me & Tuscany. Less than The Breadwinner. Less than even Melania.
A lot of films with Sundance roots are a part of this week’s lineup. Broken Lizard debuted Super Troopers there in 2001. Fox Searchlight released it in theaters over a year later in February 2002, when it opened to $6.2 million and finished with $18.4 million. After releasing Club Dread (2004), Beerfest (2006), and the barely-released The Slammin’ Salmon (2009), the comedy troupe would not appear in a theatrical release together until the partially crowd-funded Super Troopers 2 in 2018. The sequel opened to $9.8 million and finished with over $30 million, their highest-grossing film to date. So why not a third? Searchlight obliged, and Super Troopers 3 was greeted with just $4 million this weekend, less than a million more than Club Dread started with in 2004.
Pixar’s Toy Story 5 is the third-highest grossing animated film since the pandemic began, passing Moana 2 ($460.4 million) last weekend. And it will settle into that slot all while remaining in the top five for its eighth straight week, the first film to do that since Zootopia 2. It made $3.9 million for a total now of $470.3 million. That is $4 million behind Finding Dory’s pace ($474.6 million), which made $1.9 million in its eighth weekend. $480-490 million still seems like TS5’s landing on the domestic side. Worldwide it is now 39th all time among first-run releases with $1.094 billion.
Minions & Monsters is the 12th-highest grossing animated film since the pandemic; 11th place belongs to Puss In Boots: The Last Wish ($185.5 million), and Kung Fu Panda 4 is 10th ($193.5 million). Every film from ninth place up grossed $361 million or higher. M&M added to its total with $3.5 million this weekend, putting it less than $10 million behind the next notch on the ladder with $176.4 million. Of the top 16 animated films since 2021, six belong to Disney and nine are from Universal. Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is seventh. Minions & Monsters is now over $473 million worldwide. Also continuing the trek towards half a billion is Curry Barker’s Obsession. The Focus release is now over $488 million globally.
Disney has certainly had its share of bombs of late, including The Marvels, Snow White, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, Tron: Ares, Haunted Mansion, Lightyear, Strange World, Wish, and Elio. And those are just some of the big ones… since the pandemic. 2026’s live-action Moana is going to join that list towards the top. In its fifth weekend, it grossed $2.8 million to bring its domestic total to $121.4 million. Worldwide the film has hit $280 million, which is more than any of the above titles made (save for Indiana Jones), but a $250 million budget goes a long way on that fuse.
Eli Roth’s first film since Borderlands sees him returning to his gory horror roots with Ice Cream Man. Apart from the disastrous video game adaptation and his remake of Death Wish, Roth has had a pretty decent success rate with his low-budget fare. His adaptation of The House With a Clock In Its Walls with its $42 million budget was a success for Universal and also his highest-grossing film to date ($62.9 million domestic and $131.4 million worldwide). Ice Cream Man joins his smaller-budgeted affairs and is the third release under Roth’s Horror Section production company. Jimmy and Stiggs got a wide launch into 626 theaters, grossing $111,685, and Dream Eater finished with $123,758 in a release of 352 theaters. Ice Cream Man just opened to $2 million in 1,682 theaters, a per-theater-average of $1,189.
Olivia Wilde’s The Invite continues to climb the Sundance premiere charts. Another $718,000 this weekend brings its total to $24.2 million. It is now among the top 25 premieres since 2000 and is on the verge of passing one of the festival’s first big success stories in Steven Soderbergh’s sex, lies and videotape, which made $24.7 million back in 1989. A24 also released Matt Johnson’s Tony in six theaters this weekend. It grossed $349,000, which amounted to the fifth-best per-theater average ($58,159) of the year following The Moment ($106,985), Spider-Man: Brand New Day ($80,252), Pillion ($60,442), and Maddie’s Secret ($58,206). So A24 owns three of the top four this year after having two of the top three in 2025 with Marty Supreme and Friendship. The Invite ($54,158) is now seventh this year.
Speaking of Sundancers, Jane Schoenbrun debuted there with We’re All Going to the World’s Fair in 2022. The release by Utopia opened to $12,750 in three theaters and grossed $101,178 total. Their follow-up, I Saw the TV Glow, which debuted at Sundance in 2024, was released by A24 initially in four theaters to $119,015, ultimately grossing $4.94 million. Their third film, Teenage Sex and Death at Camp Miasma, premiered at Cannes this year and opened in five NY/LA theaters this weekend. The Mubi release made $252,000 for a PTA of $50,300; the eighth best of the year. It will expand over the next two weeks. Even a slightly wider launch this week would have likely found this sex-positive film in the top 10. Just look at CatVideoFest 2026, which Oscilloscope had in 255 theaters and grossed $568,000. Draw your own conclusions.
Beyond the Top 10: Hadestown Keeps Kicking Around
“For five nights only?” Yeah, right. That is what the posters for <a href="https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hadestown_the_musical” rel=”nofollow noopener” target=”_blank”>Hadestown: The Musical said about its run in theaters. Here we are 17 days later. The film is still playing, and it spent three weeks in the top 10, even with a minimalist $391,000 this weekend. That brought its total over $20 million, Bleecker Street’s second-highest grossing release ever. Kiyoshi Kurosawa’s The Samurai and the Prisoner expanded from three to 44 theaters this week. The Janus Films release grossed $174,000 bringing its total to nearly $275,000.
On The Vine: Ewan McGregor and Anne Hathaway Take Us to The End of Oak Street
The summer of Anne Hathaway continues next week with Warner Bros. as she joins Ewan McGregor and dinosaurs in The End of Oak Street, from the director of It Follows. That is PG-13, but the kids get dinosaurs too from Paramount with Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie, which is already up $23 million with international grosses. Jeff Daniels is Ronald Reagan in The Brink of War from Angel Studios. Kristen Stewart and Alia Shawkat go on a stoned adventure in the Neon comedy The Wrong Girls. The director of The Vast of Night has his 2025 SXSW premiere, The Rivals of Amziah King featuring Matthew McConaughey, get its debut from Black Bear Pictures. Finally, Focus will try to replicate some of that Hadestown success with Six: The Musical Live.
Full List of Box Office Results: August 7-9
Thumbnail image by ©Marvel Entertainment/©Columbia Pictures
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