MediaTalk | Season 4 | Ep. 21 - New Power Players to Lift 2026 Summer Box Office Past $4B: The Sequel

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Mike Reynolds   00:00:00

Hi. I'm Mike Reynolds, a senior reporter covering the media industry with S&P Global Market Intelligence, Tech, Media and Telecom News team. Welcome to MediaTalk, a podcast hosted by S&P Global, where news and research staff explore issues in the ever-evolving media landscape. Memorial Day weekend is in the rearview mirror. The unofficial start of summer is behind us and a fair number of Americans spent the holiday weekend at movie theaters. Disney, Lucas Films, the Mandaloral and Grugo, the latest installment in the Star Wars franchise, tallied about $100 million domestically and upward of $160 million worldwide. Focus Features Horror film Love Session improved upon its opening week, grossing $32 million, while Michael added $20 million to its U.S. total as the film about the Lake King of Pop takes aim at topping Bohemianoracity as the all-time leading musical biopic. Find out S&P Global Market Intelligence CAGR senior research analyst, Wade Holden Mac Matthews, Associate Director, Editorial Design and Publishing at S&P, Think about these films and the 2026 summer slate in a reprice edition of MediaTalk. Mac, are you and the family going to go see a lot of movies this summer?

Mac Mathews   00:01:06

Yes. I mean they've got some that are aimed right at us, new Toy Story, new Minions. -- yes, sign us up.

Mike Reynolds   00:01:13

Before we get to the summer, let's talk about the spring. It's been a pretty strong period. There's some new films, a holdover with the latest avatar. Think good this spring, right?

Mac Mathews   00:01:21

Yes. Spring was really great, up over 14% to $2.67 billion, one of the better springs since the pandemic. Yes, big hits with Mario Galaxy and Project H Mary, Hoppers and Avatar, -- like you said, it brought in $187.4 million in 2026. So yes, it was a strong spring with a lot of successful films.

Mike Reynolds   00:01:43

All right. Mac, we knew that the second Mario film was going to do well, yet and maybe I'm wrong about this in some circles, it's maybe being viewed as a bit of a disappointment. It hasn't measured up to the first go around in the box office.

Mac Mathews   00:01:55

Yes. It's interesting the way sequels go these days. You see a few different patterns. Sometimes inside out to inside out too, you get this big jump. But sometimes it's about the timing and sometimes it's about the quality and then who knows what else goes into it. But I wouldn't say that Mario Galaxy is doing too bad, though. It's still around $1 billion.

Mike Reynolds   00:02:18

No, that's what I'm saying $1 billion among friends, right?

Mac Mathews   00:02:21

And so it's just maybe behaving more like a Jurassic World kind of sequel where it drops a little bit from the last one, but it's still good money, and you're going to want to keep making them as long as it gets around that level. So they made it for $150 million or whatever. That's yes, it's still a great profit margin. You can do several more sequels. I guess I did hear that -- I haven't seen it. I did hear that it wasn't as strong as the first one. And so maybe word of mouth just wasn't quite there to push it to be the bigger movie of the 2.

Mike Reynolds   00:02:54

Okay. All right. Let's talk a little bit about music. The last few years, we had Taylor Swift, concert film did really well. We had a Bruce Biopick, maybe not so good. A Dylan Biopick, pretty good. And now we've got Michael. Mac, when we spoke last year, we talked about this again, the name Michael just get out there. There was no need for anything else. People have gravitated toward the man who was the King of Pop.

Mac Mathews   00:03:18

Yes, it's done really well. It's really found an audience, and it's beating Bohemian Rapsody and catching up to it. It hasn't even released in Japan yet, where I believe Michael Jackson has a lot of listeners. So it's just doing really well.

Mike Reynolds   00:03:32

And waited, as Mac just said, it's catching up to Bohemian Racdy now granted in the sense that the more recent films, the performers are still with us. In the case of Michael and Freddie, no longer, but that's impressive that Michael may catch up to Bohemian Racd. I think it was over 900 million globally.

Mac Mathews   00:03:49

Yes, it's 880 million, $900 million, something like that. I've seen it time and again that musical biopicks can't draw a good even the Bob Marley pick not too long ago, Bob Marley one love did well, not $900 million or Michael Jackson, but it still worldwide is $177 million. That was in '24. In 2022, we had the Elvis Biopick, $288 million worldwide. Yes, there's an appetite for musical biopicks out there. People show up and spend their money for.

Mike Reynolds   00:04:22

Speaking of Elvis, there was an Elvis new concert film from one of the residencies back in Vegas. Did you see it? Did you wear a Cape when you went to check it out?

Mac Mathews   00:04:31

I did not see it. I'm very curious to see it. I'm sure I'm going to get it on a home video, whether it's digitally or I get a 4K release of it. I want to see it. It should sit well on my shelf right next to my Elvis 68 comeback special DVD box -- but I'm looking forward to it.

Mike Reynolds   00:04:47

All right. Very good. All right, guys. On to summer, and let's agree for the purpose of here, summer starts May 1 this year with Devilware's Prada sequel, 20 years after the fact, Street, Hathaway, Blunt, Tucci, they're all back. What do we think, Mac, it's been doing pretty well, right?

Mac Mathews   00:05:05

Yes, it's doing great. You usually start the summer with a Marvel movie, and this is outperforming Thunderbolt, which kicked off last summer. So it's beating Marvel and how amazing to see a movie that's more geared towards women audiences performing that way and just reshaping ideas about what can be successful at the box office and what audience you need to try and engage -- there's also just seeing how driven the box office has been lately by young moviegoers. Gen Z likes to go to the movies. They're kind of taking up the mantle. And yes, even with Michael, which we were just talking about, I think the majority of the people going to see Michael are under 34. And so these are a lot of people who are very young or not born yet when Michael was doing his thing and at his peak, and yet they are still driving traffic to this movie. And so we're just looking at an evolving landscape where different types of movies are filling different slots. We're a little less reliant on superheroes, but other things are capturing people's attention. It's a lot of movies based on books and it's a lot of movies based on video games. So it's still known properties. You have a movie out right now called the Sheep Detectives that is an Amazon release that is not based on existing IP, getting great reviews, doing well. It started at about $14 million, and then it's been holding pretty well and might hold for a while longer. But that's also an important part of the conversation just talking -- we're talking about Michael Jackson, who's well known, Devil Wars Prada is a well-known property to see things that are new and kind of getting in there and being part of the conversation. And from what I hear the sheep detectors is a must in the theater, I've heard there's 3 who doesn't want to go skip some therapy sessions and just go to the theater and let it out with some strangers.

Mac Mathews   00:07:01

Mac was saying about younger moviegoers showing up for these films. I just have to wonder if some of it is that there is a generation out there that they've discovered these movies like Frey Friday and Delaware product through streaming and we've gotten some cultural buzz and it drives the conversation of, hey, maybe there should be a sequel. And that's what's happening with these things because Free Friday came out last summer, and it did 153 million worldwide on budget of around $42 million. So not bad. So just curious if that's kind of what we're seeing with some of these properties that are a decade-plus old, all of a sudden getting a sequel.

Mike Reynolds   00:07:42

All right. What else has come out so far, again, now that we're in the summer months of May, Wade, what else has come out that we should know about or is about to come out?

Mac Mathews   00:07:50

So just this past weekend, there was the new sort of horror film obsession that I guess has garnered some good buzz, and it had a decent 17.2 million opening weekend. It's still Michael in the devil, whereas Praditude still put up higher numbers, but not a bad showing.

Mac Mathews   00:08:06

Obsession, I just wanted to mention that it was made for under $1 million or around $1 million. And so making that 17 million, it's just proving that how profitable horror can be in low budget horror. And it's driven by young moviegoers who are going to see it. And it's directed by, I think, a 26-year-old who has got to start on YouTube, another trend. We've got these YouTubers coming up that are given the chance to make movies. They're making them for low budgets and they're making bank with young people at the theaters. So that's just a trend that I just think needed to be highlighted. So I'll turn it back over to you.

Mac Mathews   00:08:40

Perfect. Yes, I hadn't been able to dig too deep into it like you had. So that's great. I was just going to say this was a rather quiet weekend, like Moral Combat 2 was supposed to come out this weekend and then they pushed it back, I think, try to take advantage of getting a couple of weekends with IMAX screens before the Mandalorian and Gros here for Memorial Day weekend. So yes, that's what we've got to look forward to coming up here over Memorial Day. And then I'm speaking of family films. There's the Natebargeti family comedy, the breadwinner coming out. The trailer all gave me some Mr. Mom vibes for those of us of that generation and then the very curious horror film called backrooms where the sort of endless lin of rooms is discovered in this abandoned or closing down furniture store. weird vibes from that. I think that could be another low budget horror hit also this summer.

Mike Reynolds   00:09:38

Mac, you're on the floor now. What's your thought -- what's the summer going to be like?

Mac Mathews   00:09:42

Okay. There's a lot of big tentpoles coming through. So something is going to pop. I would bet there's the new Christopher Nolan. You've got Steven Spielberg. I would just love to see those 2 battling it out. You've got, as we mentioned, the family films like Minions and Toy Story. You've got some superhero stuff with Super Girl and a new Spider-Man. And then Star Wars is going to kick things off in just a few days. And I expect all of them to open pretty well, but I really think the quality of these movies is going to drive which one kind of goes ballistic or goes to the moon and gets $1 million plus. Because lately, you've been just seeing a lot of correlation between audience reception and how well the movies do, and that's kind of how it's supposed to work. But for a while, you still have plenty of flops, but there was an expectation that maybe moviegoers aren't savvy. So let's just give them this that will make them happy and they'll go see anything. It's not like that anymore. So they're really trying to make these movies work for their audiences and audiences are very kind of sensitive to word of mouth and reviews. People are out there wanting to see movies. And you're talking about young people that their Internet natives, they know if something has hype or not. They're right there with it, seeing the reels, -- they're hearing from their friends as they get out of the theater right away, whether it's a must-see or not. And then that really plays into how things go. I'm just going to buckle up and see what works for people, and I'm going to try and be there myself to see if I'm with the Zeist.

Mike Reynolds   00:11:16

Internet buzz, the word of mouth, does that enter into your thinking, not only in terms of what you might want to see, but in terms of your coverage of the business?

Mac Mathews   00:11:27

It's extremely important for Internet buzz for a film these days. It has to break through the noise of all of the available content options for people out there. And we're talking not just what's on TV or streaming services, but TikTok and YouTube. It's got to break through it all. So yes, online buzz and conversations surrounding your movie is extremely important to help boost those first weekend numbers and to continue and boost sales in the following weeks and hopefully drive a good 12- to 15-week run in theaters before it gets shuffled out the door for something else.

Mike Reynolds   00:12:01

What's the summer going to be like?

Mac Mathews   00:12:03

I'm optimistic. I look at the lineup, and I think there's a few potential sleepers in there. I think films that could go 50-50. I'm thinking Masters of the Universe. I'm not sure...

Wade Holden   00:12:14

How many Han fans there are these days. I guess some people got some early screens and there's been some posts and tweets already about -- it's actually somewhat of a good time that there's some comedy in there. People are saying it was giving Guardians of the Galaxy vibes and that the film seems to be like in on the joke, so to speak of -- we know that this is a Heman movie. It's not going to be Christopher Nolan, the odyssey. -- like they get it and they just -- they're trying to put together a good time. So that could hit big.

Mac Mathews   00:12:41

We're about to see the new scary movie franchise.

Mike Reynolds   00:12:45

6, I believe. The Toy Story is # 5.

Mac Mathews   00:12:48

I think it's really funny that they named it scary movie just like it was the first one, and I believe they're emulating the Scream franchise who when the sixth film came out in that franchise, they just called it Scream again. Yes, I think we're in for a good summer. I think we've got Super Girl. Super Girl looks great. James Gun knows how to make and produce a superhero film. I think there's a lot of people, me included, who are very excited for the next chapter of Tom Hollands Spider-Man after how things left off. Do I think it's going to reach the levels of that -- no Way Home had with Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield get starring in that film? No. I don't know if that Spider-Man movie will ever do as well as that film did. But there's lots of reasons to be optimistic. And of course, later in the summer and August, when things are winding down as far as tentpole films, anyone who's a fan of Stupid comedy gets to look forward to Super Tropers 3.

Mike Reynolds   00:13:42

Absolutely. Absolutely. So both of you guys, we talked about Christopher Nolan and we've got the Odyssey. I'm rooting for it. Matt Damon. Hesious. Anne Hathaway is in 1,000 movies this summer. She is Panelope. Is that going to work? It's obviously a Star Power and the Star Director.

Mac Mathews   00:13:58

I hope it works -- we're seeing these days the online discourse around the casting, again, the choices. It's happened time and time again. And sometimes it negatively affects a film and sometimes a film just performs well in spite of it all. It's difficult for me to say if that's going to affect it. It's an all-star cast. It's crazy and Christopher Nolan makes a really good movie. It's hard to bet against it. But hopefully, when more eyeballs are on it, it can get past all of that ugliness online about who's cast in what role. And...

Mike Reynolds   00:14:35

Mac, what do you think?

Mac Mathews   00:14:36

Yes, I'm not making any predictions on it. I think that it will probably do pretty well in terms of the Nolan brand name. His movies are celebrated. I don't know if it will hit the stratosphere a runaway success like some of his movies can be he got to be part of Barbenheimer. Would Oppenheimer have done as well without that phenomenon going to be something like that. What kind of moment will this enter into? And what will it mean to the people who are thinking of how to spend their entertainment budget at that time. So I don't know, but I certainly want to see what happens.

Mac Mathews   00:15:10

One of the things to think about with the Odyssey is that it is squeezed in there in a very packed July schedule. You have Minions and Monsters that comes out for the 4th of July weekend. And then a week before the Odyssey is the live action Moan, which by all accounts will probably do very well. And then you have the Odyssey coming out on the 17th, and then it's got 2 weeks of breathing room before Spider-Man brand New Day hits theaters. It's going to have some stiff competition for screens and ticket sales in that month. There is a lot going on in July.

Mike Reynolds   00:15:45

Got you. I got you. All right. Let's just take a quick breather. You guys have talked about a lot of things, Mac, anything that comes to mind that we haven't addressed at all so far.

Mac Mathews   00:15:55

A bit of news. It's more about the fall, but we were just talking about Barbenheimer, and this came to mind that Greta Gerwig Narnia movie being made for Netflix will be getting a wide release in theaters. I think it was scheduled to come out this fall on streaming, and now it's being bumped to early next year theatrical, if I'm not mistaken. And that just speaks to the state of the industry right now where there is a little bit of -- there's this theatrical momentum. And maybe it's the creators being able to make more demands, like if you want to work with me, it has to go out in theaters. Maybe that's part of it. And -- but maybe it's also studios and content makers and wanting to get in on what seems to be a bit of a return to form for theaters and theatrical business. So it's seen as a relevant cultural force now to have your movie out there. When it does well, you really have the dollars to back it up instead of some streaming number that's the cultural impact of some of these streaming movies that are said to be big I hear more about at the water cooler, people saying, "Oh, I went to see Project Hil Mary and I cried and it was so good. And those types of experiences that really are -- that is the cinema experience that you remember, it forms a new memory when you go out and take the time to really do something and you see it on that huge screen with the crowd and you all experience the emotions together. So yes, I just -- I don't know if Netflix will put more stuff out in theaters like this. They have a different business model. They're disrupting -- they've been disrupting the theatrical business with their streaming-first model and streaming-only model. But you could see this as maybe a bit of a tide shifting. So I just thought that was interesting.

Mike Reynolds   00:17:40

So Wade, to that end, it must be hardening for you to hear that again, the shared theater experience, the water coolness, if you will. that's got to help in terms of box office overall. As we look to last summer, I think the industry came up short of $4 billion. This year, given what both you guys are saying, it would seem $4 billion is going to happen.

Wade Holden   00:18:00

I feel like, yes, it is. I don't have final numbers yet for just this last weekend, which would be the third week of the summer, but Preliminary numbers that I grabbed like show another 14.8% in growth in weekly box office. So you're looking that $606 million in box office ticket sales for just the first 3 weeks of the summer season that we track.

Mike Reynolds   00:18:22

That's good math, right?

Wade Holden   00:18:24

Yes, up 29.8% from the $466.8 million last year when clearly the summer didn't have as strong a start. I just think Toy Story 5, another Minions movie, Moana, 2 Superhero movies, a Spielberg movie, Christopher Nolan movie. There's a lot out there. I think $4 billion is definitely within reach for this summer. And I think it's much needed. I think. It's always exciting when we get to see things rebound and we see films making big money and we get to talk about it and we get to be excited about these wonderful experiences that we get to share with each other.

Mike Reynolds   00:18:59

Mac, you're a $4 billion man as well.

Mac Mathews   00:19:03

With the amount of big movies we're talking about, I think $4 billion becomes a reasonable hope because we mentioned a lot of movies that could make towards $1 billion each, right? If they pop off and are really popular, then yes, you get a couple that make $1 billion each. And then some of these others, even if they fall shy of $1 billion, they're going to get maybe $500 million on the low side for some of these. So yes, once you start adding them up the sheer number of possible hits, then yes, $4 billion does seem achievable.

Wade Holden   00:19:36

And my prediction is that my wife and ticket sales are purchased for Jason Statham mute on August 21 will be the tickets that put it over $4 billion...

Mac Mathews   00:19:46

That's...

Mike Reynolds   00:19:47

A little specificity there, Wade.

Mike Reynolds   00:19:50

Thank you very much. All right.

Mike Reynolds   00:19:51

We're going to end on that note. Guys, I appreciate you joining us again. This episode of media talk is always great fun when we talk Hollywood. Wade and Mac, thank you for talking with us. We do appreciate it very much.

Wade Holden   00:20:01

Pleasure.

Mac Mathews   00:20:03

Yes. Thank you for having me.

Mike Reynolds   00:20:04

All right. This is Mike Reynolds and thanks for listening. We'll check back in September and see how things mapped out. In the meantime get your popcorn ready, maybe we'll see you in the theaters and we'll certainly catch up on the next installment of Media Talk