REGINA — As summer blockbuster season heads into the important month of July, now seems like a good time to take a look at where things stand for summer movie season at the cinemas.
What a change we have seen from all the doom and gloom of previous years. In the past few years, people were talking about how this was the death of theatres and the end of people going out to the movies. The feeling had been that the COVID-19 lockdowns, and the boom in streaming as an outcome, had created a semi-permanent situation of people preferring to stream movies at home rather than bothering to go out of the house to the cinemas.
But now we are reading stories, like one I read on CNBC, about how in 2026 we could be flirting with a $10-billion box office for the year, the biggest since before the pandemic. And I’m seeing more and more stories about a revival of ticket sales and attendance at cinemas.
Personally, I don’t think it takes rocket science to figure it out. We have a packed season of movies going on at the moment, and a big reason for that has to do with the fact that Hollywood is simply back in business after the dearth of new product over the past number of years. First there were the disruptions caused by COVID-19 that delayed a lot of production. Then there was the actors’ strike and the writers’ strike, which delayed even more production. That resulted in major gaps in the products being shown in cinemas, and that dampened the enthusiasm of the public.
Now, finally, we have a situation where we have been getting a full slate of features at the cinemas, with one big movie after another showing up, and attendance has finally stabilized.
The other thing is that despite all the theatres-are-finished doomsayers out there, the reality is that if you want to beat the usual boredom of sitting in front of the TV or your (ugh!) cellphone, going to the movies is still the most affordable option out there — especially compared to the live alternatives. The cost of going to major concerts or sporting events these days is absolutely ridiculous — you practically need to take out a loan from the bank to afford to go!
A lot of people were worried in 2026 about how the cinemas would fare in competition with the World Cup of soccer, but it’s proving to be no competition at all. Just one World Cup game ticket can set you back thousands of dollars! Who can afford it, except for elite celebrity-type people?
While movie theatres have seen steady business this summer, what we are not seeing so far is one single movie dominating and blowing the competition away. Instead, it has been a dog-eat-dog existence, with some movies doing very well while others end up flopping.
Some of the successes have been unexpected. There are lots of stories about this being a big summer for the horror genre — i.e. Obsession, with $233 million domestic, and Backrooms, with $184 million — and spoofs of the genre like the latest Scary Movie, with $103 million.
These are all in the Top 10 summer movies so far in 2026. I guess people like to get scared out of their wits all 12 months of the year and not just in October like they usually do.
Let’s now take a look at how summer movie season has gone to this point on a movie-by-movie basis, and see who some of the winners and losers have been for those movies that have been released since May 1:
The Devil Wears Prada 2 (May 1) — The sequel to the 2006 original with Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway opened to a $76.7-million domestic weekend and a current gross of $219,981,840 domestic, and $458.1 million worldwide.
Mortal Kombat II (May 8) — Opened to $38.5 million with a current haul of $79.7 million domestic.
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (May 22) — This is a perfect example of why it has been a dog-eat-dog kind of summer. It opened at $98 million for the Memorial Day long weekend and has made $175.4 million so far, which you would think is pretty good — except this is the Star Wars franchise we are talking about, and by Star Wars standards, this is disappointing. It is, in fact, the lowest-grossing live-action movie in the whole franchise, and also set another dubious franchise record by dropping in gross by over 70 per cent in its second weekend.
Masters of the Universe (June 5) — Opened to a $29-million weekend, currently at $62 million.
Disclosure Day (June 12) — This latest Steven Spielberg science-fiction film has hauled in $94.5 million so far.
Toy Story 5 (June 19) — Without question, this latest in the Pixar franchise has been the big winner so far this summer season. It opened to $159 million domestic in its first weekend and is now at $298 million domestic and $287.8 million international, for a total haul so far of $585.8 million. That will be a tall order for the remaining blockbuster releases to be able to top.
Now I want to talk at length about Supergirl, which is without a doubt the most notorious bomb so far of this so-called summer blockbuster season. A blockbuster this is not — it even made The Mandalorian and Grogu look like a hit.
The buzz leading up to its release on June 26 was not all that good anyway, with a lot of people badmouthing Milly Alcock in the lead role and badmouthing all the problems they heard about the movie, including negative word of mouth as well as a lousy script. The film critics and the DC fans don’t seem to think Alcock is the main problem, but they are absolutely blaming the screenwriter Ana Nogueira, and there has been lots of trashing online of producer James Gunn for making a hash out of every movie he touches in the DC franchise.
Supergirl rolled out this past weekend to a gross of $38 million, according to Box Office Mojo numbers. That sounds good until you realize Toy Story 5 beat it by a considerable margin in its second week of release — and worse yet, it cost a fortune to make. Variety ran a story claiming Supergirl will lose Warner Bros. $100 million.
But what did you expect? Supergirl was never one of the top DC characters — she’s not in Superman’s or Batman’s or Wonder Woman’s class, so you can’t expect it to attract a massive haul of hundreds of millions of dollars like the others.
Besides, I’m ancient enough to remember when they rolled out a Supergirl movie back in 1984 with Helen Slater in the title role, and that was a notorious flop. And this was right after the Superman movies had been all the rage. Film critics Siskel and Ebert had a field day, giving it two thumbs down. Bottom line is Hollywood should have seen this debacle coming from four decades away. Sorry, Supergirl fans.
Now we really get into crunch time in the month of July. We still have a lot of big-time releases coming up with Minions & Monsters on July 1, Moana on July 10, The Odyssey on July 17 and Spider-Man: Brand New Day on July 31.
At the end of the day, it will be the performance of these and other movies that will ultimately tell the tale of whether there is a real shot for the studios of their best box-office performance since before the pandemic.
