Logo text
The headlines over the last couple years have been brutal: “Box Office Doom Loop,” declared the L.A. Times. “The Movie Theater Comeback That Wasn’t,” blazed Variety. “The 2025 Box Office Comeback That Wasn’t,” echoed Axios. And, sure, The Hollywood Reporter had a few too (“The Summer Box Office Crisis: Is the Sky Really Falling This Time?”)
Then came the appropriately titled Project Hail Mary ($684 million) in March. Then the also appropriately titled Obsession ($475 million) in May. Then there were Backrooms ($390 million) and The Odyssey ($911 million). Wait, what? None of these were even franchises? But we had those too, with Toy Story 5 and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie raking in a cool billion each.
And now: Spider-Man, Spider-Man, delivering an opening weekend that seemingly only Spider-Man can. Nearly $1 billion globally in just a handful of day, an all-time record opening of $360 million domestic. The film wasn’t even some “you must see this in a pricy premium format” release like an Avatar or Dune.
So far, 2026 is shaping up to be the strongest post-pandemic year at the box office to date, raking in about $6.2 billion domestically through last Sunday. That’s 15 percent ahead of the same point in 2025, with five movies approaching or crossing $1 billion globally. The second quarter, in particular, very nearly matched the same periods in 2017 through 2019.
