Already following the successful opening of 20th Century Studios/Disney’s The Devil Wears Prada 2, there’s an excitement in the air that this summer finally could deliver another $4 billion-plus season post-Covid.

Thanks to Prada 2‘s $76.7M opening and Lionsgate’s Michael holding over with a Weekend 2 of $54.4M, this was the second-best start of summer since Covid, with all films totaling $173.1M, per ComScore. The best summer kickoff post Covid remains 2022 when Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness led all titles to $222.3M.

Another excellent sign: Summer begins with the 2026 domestic box office already 14% ahead of the same January 1-May 3 frame a year ago.

“This is shaping up to be one of the best summer movie seasons of all time and certainly since the pandemic, with a shot at rivaling the performance of the epic ‘Barbenheimer’-powered summer of 2023 where the domestic tally hopped over the $4 billion mark, which was the pre-pandemic benchmark for the season,” beamed Paul Dergarabedian, Head of Marketplace Trends at Comscore.

But there’s something bittersweet about the season, and this comes at a time when Paramount 3.0 wants to keep 30 films in the marketplace after its Warner Bros’ acquisition.

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“Fewer movies are now doing more of the heavy lifting due to a new ecosystem since the streaming disruption,” said Kevin Goetz, Founder & CEO of Screen Engine.

While this summer, per the Comscore schedule, boasts 57 wide releases (titles opening north of 1,000 theaters in their first weekend), which is more than last year’s 44 and 2019’s 45, but it’s not all yippie skippy. Keep in mind that those 57 titles include a slew of indies from distributors that open their movies in the high hundreds of thousands to low millions off thrifty marketing budgets and easy marketplace access due to low digital print fees. Yes, that’s fresh product for exhibition but not necessarily pre-Covid cash. If you want to talk turkey, of those 57 movies, only 34 are from either major motion picture studios including Amazon MGM or distinguished labels such as A24 and Neon that have a history of delivering an extra shot to summer. In other words, those 34 films will have some kind of multimillion-dollar marketing budget behind them.

In total, there’s not a lot of counterprogramming going on by the studios, particularly when it comes to putting one potential sleeper against and an event title. This coming weekend is one of the few this summer, which has plenty of studio counterprogramming before August. And guess what? It’s going to be a rich weekend — so take note, Hollywood.

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New Line’s Mortal Kombat 2 is expected to open to $50M, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 looking to hold quite strong, -45%, in the low $40Ms, possibly even giving the Midway Games adaptation a run for its money. Michael will continue to be platinum in Weekend 3 with around $30M, followed by Amazon MGM Studios’ Sheep Detective north of $12M and Paramount’s Billie Eilish concert movie between $6M-$9M. It’s summer weekends like this that the industry needs more of.

Another weekend geared at different demos is June 5, with Amazon MGM Studios’ Masters of the Universe eyeing men and families and Miramax/Paramount’s Scary Movie with diverse audiences. One box office data company sees Scary Movie, since its arrival on tracking, pacing with Scream 7, which ultimately posted a franchise-record start of $63.6M.

One weekend that’s completely lacking in any depth from the major motion picture studios is Memorial Day weekend, which clearly won’t break last year’s all-time record of $329.8M that was propped by Disney’s holiday record opener Lilo & Stitch ($182.6M) and Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning ($79M). This year, Lucasfilm/Disney’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu stands alone (coincidentally, no majors dated against Solo: A Star Wars Story when it opened over Memorial Day 2018 to $103M over four days). Mandalorian & Grogu arrived on tracking with one of the lowest forecasts for a 21st century Star Wars live-action movie at $80M, and it will be lucky to get there, per sources. The movie is apt to be challenged by being the first Disney+ title to hit the screen: Will subscribers wait to see it at home?

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Some sources say that we’re still in a post-strike purgatory. It takes two to three years to build a tentpole, and the pipeline was disrupted three years ago, which means we’re feeling that stinging effect now. A positive point of view is that with successes such as Project Hail Mary, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Michael, clearly the town knows that theatrical can work. It’s just a matter of time before we’re back to some normalcy. By the way, the studios haven’t quite filled out summer 2027 yet, with only 25 wide entries currently on the schedule.

“Young people are not going to the movies as frequently as they did a generation ago,” Gertz said, “and the older generations are also attending less frequently, which has created a downward pressure to what was an $11 billion business a decade ago to now a $9 billion business, give or take.

“Studios are releasing fewer films, but audiences can sense when something feels big and high quality and naturally gravitate toward those titles,” he added about how moviegoers have come to own opening weekends, i.e. A Minecraft Movie, Michael, Barbie and Oppenheimer.

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For the most part this summer, it’s one major-studio event film per weekend, in what’s a do-or-die moment for such title. Realize that not everything on the calendar is built for an uber-wide audience a la Disney/Pixar’s Toy Story 5 on June 19, which is jockeying to be the top-grossing movie of the summer against Sony/Marvel Studios’ Spider-Man: Brand New Day on July 31.

Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey also will be one of the summer’s top-grossing titles, the pic’s sellout of Imax 70MM locations a year in advance being an enormous indicator of want-to-see. With the Matt Damon-led movie opening July 17 and Spider-Man: Brand New Day two weeks later, a vacuum was created on the weekend of July 24 with zero major studio movies booked. The only wide entry that weekend is IFC’s dialogue-less crime noir Motor City. Odyssey has Imax for three weeks, which means Brand New Day opens sans Imax.

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When it comes to June releases, they need more stickiness and a true expansion beyond the core demos upon which they were greenlighted. It also can be argued that the campaigns for these movies aren’t in full swing yet. We’re talking about Gen-X IP Masters of the Universe, Universal’s Disclosure Day from Steven Spielberg (June 12) and Warner Bros/DC Studios’ Supergirl (June 26). While given the best shot in the arms for their re-inventions, with Masters of the Universe starring hot Red, White & Royal Blue leading man Nichoas Galitzine and directed by Travis Knight, who expanded Transformers demos to female audiences with Bumblebee, as well as Supergirl being in the hands of I, Tonya and Cruella filmmaker Craig Gillespie, duly note that both are older IPs that didn’t work onscreen in their previous iterations in the 1980s. The hope is that we don’t see a repeat of Tron: Ares or The Running Man here. Spielberg, one of the fathers of the modern-day blockbuster, has yet to open up a movie north of $80M at the domestic B.O. for a title he directed. His record opening at the domestic B.O. remains 1997’s The Lost World: Jurassic Park ($72.1M 3-day)

“The biggest takeaway is that there is an audience for every single one of these films, but they have to be made aware of them,” Greenlight Analytics CEO Bill Skelly said. “The methods for attracting customers have evolved, yet the film industry is failing to modernize its playbook. People’s summer schedules fill up quickly, making it increasingly difficult to break through the noise; waiting until the final weeks before a release to start pushing is simply too late. The industry excels at marketing, it is just not very good at advertising. The interest is there, but studios must learn how to actually convert it. Ultimately, unless you learn to translate interest into box office revenue, you’re either Spider-Man or you’re banking on being someone’s rainy-day backup plan.”

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Now there could be some surprises this summer in the Longlegs sense of the word. Many are carefully watching A24’s horror movie Backrooms from director Kane Parsons (aka Kane Pixels). The Backrooms is an internet-based urban legend, describing an endless, maze of empty, yellow-wallpapered office rooms, damp carpets and buzzing fluorescent lights. There’s hope that there might be some Iron Lung fever with this project starring Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve given its rabid social media origins. The Backrooms was created in 2019 on 4chan, spread on Reddit and fan wikis and inspired games on Roblox and Minecraft. The lore built slowly in 2022 when Parsons, then a 16-year-old, transformed the tale into a cinematic universe. Using Blender, Unreal Engine and found footage, he created a YouTube series with his viral short The Backrooms: Found Footage, which has garnered over 190 million views and redefined digital-era horror storytelling.

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Long-lead tracking also is showing promise for Evil Dead Burn on July 10. Although the sequel to Evil Dead Rise moved its release date from July 24, there’s heat on this title with minimal marketing that it could emulate its 2024 predecessor ($24.5M U.S./Canada opening).

“These days, you must make a movie the absolute best that it can be which is why we are testing more and more,” Goetz said. “Whether movies are in a theater or are on a streamer, quality has become even greater table stakes.”

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