Anyone forecasting doom and gloom for the Summer of 2026 Box Office Returns must be eating their words, along with their hot buttered popcorn now.

Labor Day signals the end of the summer movie season, which started on May 1st, and this year was a record-setting one, with a take of at least $4.76 billion in ticket sales, as reported in Deadline on Monday. This is the best summer box office to date, breaking a record set back in 2013. That figure was steady across the summer, with every month (May, June, July, and August) generating north of a billion dollars in sales, each, domestically, which has never happened before.

The Odyssey, Christopher Nolan’s epic starring Matt Damon and featuring Lupita Nyong’o, Charlize Theron, Zendaya and Tom Holland, all by itself brought in 48% of that figure, or $1.23 billion for Universal Pictures. Universal also had Minions and Monsters, which brought in over $183 million, and the May take for the Super Mario Galaxy Movie, the #4 film of the year so far with $372 million.

Disney was the second-place studio, with $1.03 billion for its numerous franchise movies like The Mandalorian and Grogu, Toy Story 5, The Devil Wears Prada 2, and the live-action Moana, which by itself was an underperformer but which did beef up the total for the House of Mouse.

Sony came in third with $1 billion but has what is sure to be the biggest film of the year, Spider-Man: Brand New Day (starring Tom Holland and Zendaya, who had a doubly successful year), which is still going strong in theaters following its late July release. The latest figures show it bringing in $2.4 billion worldwide and over $923 million domestically.

Lionsgate’s Michael is the #5 film of the year so far. Released in late April, it has brought in over $372 million.

A24 had a bang-up summer too, with its sleeper hit Backrooms notching a record high for the studio ($197.5 million.) Another unexpected hit was Focus Features’ Obsession, which had several weeks at number one after its May 15th debut, and totaled over $509 million worldwide thus far.

Gen-Z and Millennials were among the most active moviegoers in the US, according to Rentrak, which supplied the data to Deadline. And the uptick in box office dollars didn’t come exclusively from inflated ticket prices: there were 322 million admissions this year vs. 275 million for summer 2025.