Forget the woes of a potential Paramount-WBD merger, the summer domestic box office is on fire, just $14.8M away from crossing $4 billion. This is all according to Rentrak.

For for the period of May 1-Aug. 9, the summer B.O. stands at $3.985B. The last time the North American box office crossed $4B was 2023 with $4.095B. This year will rep the second time post Covid it’s shot past that threshold, and the 14th time in box office history to cross $4B. Summer 2013 holds the all-time record for the best the season has ever seen with $4.755B, that’s when Iron Man 3 led with $409M followed by Despicable Me 2 with $367.7M.

It takes a village: not only have the tentpoles like Sony/Marvel Studio’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 5 and Universal’s The Odyssey delivered with a combined $1.58 billion, but the new school of filmmakers as well, and we’re talking YouTube natives Curry Barker and Kane Parsons whose respective The Obsession and The Backrooms grossed a grand total of $460.7M stateside. Those five films account for $2B of North American ticket sales or 50% of summer.

Brand New Day and Odyssey will continue to carry the torch through August. The hope is that August has another tentpole in Bad Robot’s Anne Hathaway-Ewan McGregor dinosaur movie The End of Oak Street, which right now is looking like a $30M start when it opens on Aug. 14. This weekend, with Spidey and Odysseus leading the way, it wasn’t a marketplace where all boats rose with wide counterprogramming One Night Only, Super Troopers 3 and The Ice Cream Man underperforming with low single digit starts. That said, 2026 saw its third best weekend for all titles at the U.S./Canada box office with $205M (after last weekend’s all-time record $437.1M and Toy Story 5‘s opening frame of June 19-21 which drove $231.6M). 

Get our Breaking News Alerts and Keep your inbox happy.

Comments On Deadline Hollywood are monitored. So don't go off topic, don't impersonate anyone, and don't get your facts wrong.

Δdocument.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() );