MediaTalk | Season 4 | Ep. 37 - Beyond the Billion-Dollar Hits: The Surprising Winners and Losers of the Summer Box Office

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Mike Reynolds: Hi, I'm Mike Reynolds, a senior reporter covering the media industry with the S&P Global Market Intelligence Technology, Media and Telecom News team. Welcome to "MediaTalk," a podcast hosted by S&P Global Market Intelligence, where the news and research staff explore issues in the ever-evolving media landscape. Today, we're going to revisit one of my favorite "MediaTalk" topics, theatricals in the box office. The reason I like this so much is because S&P Global has a pair of pundits par excellence in Kagan Senior Research Analyst Wade Holden and Mac Mathews. Mac is Associate Director of Editorial Design and Publishing at S&P, and he's a real movie buff. How you guys doing today?

Wade Holden: I'm doing great, thank you.

Mac Mathews: Yeah, doing good. Glad to be here.

Reynolds: All right, let's do this, guys. How should I say this? It was a pretty great summer for the movie industry. When we did our summer preview back in May, both of you pointed toward a $4 billion plus in domestic box office, but the industry exploded past that to $4.64 billion domestically. It's the second-largest domestic box office ever, behind $4.75 billion in 2013. Wade, for film purposes, summer started May 1 and ended when?

Holden: Our box office calendar is a strange thing. It's typically 52 weeks on a Monday to Sunday week. So summer this year started actually Monday, April 27th and ended on Sunday, August 30th.

Reynolds: And your thoughts on this explosive market this summer?

Holden: It's exciting. It started strong with like a three-week growth streak. And I think only four weeks there were declines out of the 18 weeks of the season that we have is great, and five of the weeks that posted growth were between 56 and 89%, and then we had two other weeks that were, like, over 100% in growth. So it was an exciting time. It was great to see such a boom.

Reynolds: Mac, your thoughts. You were also on team $4 billion-plus. Your sense for this summer?

Mathews: Yeah, it did bring the $4 billion for sure and then some. It was a little bit feast or famine, more so than I expected. I thought we maybe were going to get to four billion thanks to some $500 million, $600 million grossing movies. There were only a handful of movies that really did super well, and a lot of it was "Spider-Man" and "The Odyssey" and "Toy Story 5." And then you had a "Minions" movie doing around $500 million worldwide, which is a bit less than the last "Minions" movie. And "Supergirl" didn't do that great. "Masters of the Universe" didn't do that much. "Star Wars" didn't do that much. So it was just a bit more separation between the biggest movies and then the like kind of the next tier down than I'd anticipated. But yeah, good for theaters.

Reynolds: Wade, in the sense that, again Mac just went through the, some of the big films, but there was a lot of movies this summer, more than usual.

Holden: Oh, yeah, a lot more than in the past. We tracked 331 films released during the weeks of the summer. Including re-releases like "Top Gun" and films that get released for like the Studio Ghibli Fest and things like that. Okay. It was certainly the largest number of summer films that we've seen since we've been tracking the box office on a weekly basis starting in 1997.

Reynolds: Oh, really? Okay. So this is like a 30-year window then, or close to it.

Holden: Yeah. Yeah.

Reynolds: Mac, on the other side, there are also some key metrics around the attendance and what the films overall grossed.

Mathews: Yeah, the average domestic gross for the summer was $12.9 million, up from $11.2 million in 2025. The growth is impressive considering that larger number of films that Wade mentioned. And the admissions were up to 348.1 million in 2026, and we're still lower than some, some years in the past. But we're definitely on an upward trend, on an upward bounce since COVID.

Reynolds: Okay. That's what we want to hear, and that's good going forward. But let's go back to 2013. That was the biggest summer ever, and Mac, do you have a sense for what were the big films back then? Maybe three or four that led the way?

Mathews: Yeah, so summer 2013 was the most profitable summer ever with $4.6 billion. We had "Iron Man 3," "Despicable Me 2," "Man of Steel." We had a "Fast and Furious," a "Star Trek," "The Great Gatsby," the first "Conjuring." It... "Monsters University." It was heavy on tentpoles. And a lot of them hit, and a lot of them hit in that what I was talking about, it was like a lot of $500 million, $600 million, $700 million, $800 million worldwide films spread throughout. It wasn't really one or two carrying the whole summer. Although "Iron Man 3" did more than its share with $1.2 billion worldwide.

Reynolds: Wade, you'd alluded to this earlier in terms of, for the most part there were gains every week, but there was a bit of rollercoaster. There was some downs over the course of this summer.

Holden: Yeah. We had a couple of periods where box office was down for a couple weeks in a row. I think what's kind of interesting about it is they coincided with the two major summer holidays of our Memorial Day weekend and the Fourth of July weekend. Those were the down times. People just didn't seem to be too interested in what was coming out new in theaters that weekend or was just opting to go out and enjoy the weather and I guess maybe do some outdoor activities for the holiday weekends. But yeah. It wasn't growth every week, but when you have more than not, it tends to lead to a really great summer, and that's what happened this time around.

Reynolds: That's interesting. And again, I guess from a, from a human perspective, that's good. You can watch the movies at other times, and when you have a few days off, you should enjoy it with your family, especially if the weather's nice. Anyway. Yeah. Just one man's opinion. So anyway. Mac, you want to start first in terms of what you saw, what you liked, maybe, what surprised you or didn't?

Mathews: I guess, yeah, we could start with "The Odyssey," which was just a huge breakout setting a record for an R-rated film surpassing "Deadpool" and "Wolverine." Wade?

Holden: Yeah, I believe on a global basis, yeah.

Reynolds: It's like a three-hour movie, right?

Mathews: It's a three-hour movie. Yeah. It's Christopher Nolan's biggest film now, like even beating "The Dark Knight." That that's a huge story in how he's a tent pole. He's the brand there. Wade, did you catch that one?

Holden: "The Odyssey," absolutely, yeah, I caught it.

Mathews: Yeah, me too ...

Holden: It is interesting though that you say he's become the brand, as a director. And then in the summer we also had a kind of a disappointment from "Disclosure Day," directed by Steven Spielberg, who himself has been a brand for decades. So it's interesting to see two huge name directors and the juxtaposition of sort of the success of their films.

Mathews: Yeah. I saw "Disclosure Day," and I already had forgot about mentioning that when I was running through movies that didn't do so well earlier. But yeah. And then we had the success of "Backrooms" and "Obsession," really performing like tent poles despite being much smaller films. And that is really exciting, because when you look out into the future, it makes the possibilities seem a lot more endless. It's not like the blockbusters that cost $200 million are going to make, between this and this, and the small movies will make proportionally much less. It could be a movie that is made on a shoestring budget really blowing up. You can't look out ahead and say, "Oh, this is the big expensive movie. It'll make more." You have to look for other factors, which I'm still trying to figure out what those factors are.

Holden: That's the fun of it, right? Yeah. You just you never know. I think what's fun and interesting about "Obsession" is it still proves the theory that strong audience response and word of mouth can still, even in the day of streaming and all these other entertainment choices we have, it can still drive a film to huge success. And because "Obsession," its opening gross was 17.2 million. That's only six and a half percent of the 263.3 million it made over the summer. That's massive. That doesn't happen.

Reynolds: Yep.

Holden: "The Backrooms" did much better with $81.4 million, but you have to wonder too if sort of the hype that "Obsession" garnered, drove sort of excitement for sort of these weird new independent voices in films, and people want to say hey we know "Obsession" was great, and this "Backrooms" looks really great." And I know that "Backrooms" had more online presence, like the whole idea of the Backrooms is something that had had been talked about and gone over in online spaces for a while. So I'm sure that was part of the reason for some of its big opening weekend success. But at the same time, it's great. When you can have independent movies that no one expects to make a ton of money, and one just shy of $200 million over the summer and one well over $200 million. I think that's great for theaters. It's great for the movie business. And it creates excitement and maybe you got generations of, a younger generation of people going, remembering, "Oh yeah, see the movie in the theater is awesome. I don't just have to watch everything on my phone screen."

Reynolds: That's right. That's right. What about, you guys haven't mentioned "Spider-Man" that much. This is the third biggest movie of all time in terms of box office at this juncture.

Holden: Something like that. Yeah, it seems like a record's broken almost every week with it now. It's incredible. It's wonderful to have a film do so well. It's the second time in history that a film domestically, because the US, Canada, has done over $900 million in just that one single territory as we group those two together for domestic box office receipts. And I think too, it shows that, yeah, perhaps there has been and will be superhero fatigue. But the right property with the right people and the right formula, people are still going to show up to watch a superhero film.

Reynolds: Mac, were you among those who watched it in the movie theaters?

Mathews: Oh, yeah. Had to see that. And what Wade was saying is so true that superhero fatigue was dominating the headlines for a while. It was a big question hanging over the industry, and I think that there's some course correction happening. You're seeing fewer Marvel movies come out per year. I think they have fewer shows releasing. They're making them more special again by making them scarce again. It's less complicated to keep up with all the storylines when there's fewer of them happening, less homework you have to do. So they're making it more approachable again, and there's signs that that strategy is paying off. If you look at the "Doomsday" pre-sales, which are huge.

Reynolds: Less is more works in a lot of cases, again my two-and-a-half year old grandson, we just drove past a house that has "Spider-Man" with the web perched on their roof, and now he wants to be "Spider-Man" on Halloween. So they've got a fan going forward, if nothing else. Were there anything, guys, that in terms of something that you thought would do well and didn't, or vice versa, something that came out of nowhere in your view?

Holden: You know, I was a little surprised that maybe "Disclosure Day" didn't do that great. A little surprised about "Minions" and "Monsters" compared to the other movies in that franchise. "Supergirl," right ... and "Masters of the Universe." I saw both of those in theaters. I thought they were great. I thought I had a great time with them. Perfect summer popcorn movies as far as I was concerned. And I feel like more people should have seen it. And another surprise to me was the live action "Moana," considering how well "Moana 2" did. Sure, just what, a year or two ago. To see the sort of the disappointing results of that film. And then you have to think, and we're getting the headline again, I guess, is, does Disney have to rethink its animation to live action strategy. Yeah, that's, those are kind of the ones that stood out to me.

Reynolds: Okay. When we talked, when we did this back in May, Wade, you were pretty specific. You and your wife were going to go see "Mutiny," and that was going to be the thing for $4 billion. Obviously, I think you went past that a little earlier. Do you guys know what was the $4 billion trigger?

Holden: It's "Spider-Man" and "The Odyssey."

Reynolds: Yeah.

Holden: Those two films.

Reynolds: Okay

Holden: Just massive combination. It had great legs. "The Odyssey," great legs at the theater. And part of me wonders if that's- Still going. Yeah. Part of me wonders if that's just people absolutely desperately trying to get those IMAX tickets when those were hard to get because there's so many few theaters, and people want to see it in that format that it was shot for.

Reynolds: Interesting. Interesting. Yeah. All right. So that's summer. What about fall? Again, I think in terms of what we're going to talk about here, guys, it's September and October, and we'll keep November and Thanksgiving and holiday for another time. But any sense, Mac? What have we seen so far? I guess "Practical Magic 2" didn't exactly light the world on fire. I guess, was that 30 years ago already?

Mathews: 28 years ago- Okay ... that it came out. It came out in '98, I think the first one did.

Reynolds: Okay.

Mathews: Yeah. And the new one, didn't charge out of the gates like "Devil Wears Prada 2." But if you look at the multiple that "Devil Wears Prada 2" made compared to the first one, I think its opening weekend was about three times what the first one made or thereabouts. And I think this one, the first "Practical Magic" was a bomb itself. Okay. But it developed a cult following, and the new one came out and it did close to two and a half to three times what the original did. So it's up from that baseline which doesn't take inflation into account or anything. But yeah. It is a shame to see a Sandra Bullock movie not take off when she does so few, and she has such a track record for hits. I don't think this one is, the theaters are still loving that there's a fall movie coming out making 30 million. But compared to where they budgeted it, it's maybe not going to do as well, but there's still some weeks to see here. There's a lot of movies coming out this fall. And so it's a little more crowded than normal, but it's not crowded with tentpoles. It's crowded with small to mid-budget things. And I know we'll get into that more. But yeah, I'll be curious to see how "Practical Magic 2" does with a pretty good word of mouth. It's got a very high audience ranking on Rotten Tomatoes.

Holden: Yeah. It made, I think, worldwide like 46 million over the first weekend. And that's against a budget of around 75 million, so it does have a bit of an uphill battle if it's going to turn a profit. So yeah, maybe strong word of mouth and those positive audience scores will help it have stronger legs going forward.

Reynolds: On the other side of that, is there, again, I don't know if you guys have really assessed the slate. Are there some things that are going to catch your interest or maybe, "Practical Magic 2?" If there aren't a lot of big time films coming up, maybe it picks up momentum there because that maybe has the most recognizable people in it?

Holden: You've got "Clayface" coming out in like late October. That's a DC Comics film, but it's- Right ... it's definitely a different turn. It's more like a horror thriller, you know, focused on the Batman villain, with I think there's going to be no Batman involved. And then you have Zach Cregger, from "Weapons," I think he directed "Weapons." Did he write that too?

Mathews: Yeah.

Holden: He's reviving the "Resident Evil" franchise. That comes out this weekend actually, on September 18th. So that's going to be interesting to see if that catches anything. We got a Universal DreamWorks animation film hitting theaters. I've seen a lot of commercials over this weekend's football games for Brad Pitt's "Heart of the Beast." Yeah. It'd be interesting to see if "Street Fighter" will find an audience. "Mortal Kombat II" didn't do all that well earlier this year. Yeah. That's what's on my radar.

Reynolds: Mac, how about you? What are you thinking about here in the fall?

Mathews: There is the adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel. Her big book, the most popular book. It's called "Verity." Comes out Oct. 2. That one's got Anne Hathaway in it with Dakota Johnson. I expect that one to do really well. I don't know exactly what that means. Does that mean, opening to 30, 40, 50? I don't know what the number is at all. But yeah, that comes out at the same time as a new Tom Cruise movie, and I think "Verity" is going to do better just because the Tom Cruise movie just doesn't... He has a built-in fan base. He is a true movie star still in this era- ... in which directors are more stars than actors a lot of times. But yeah. So his movie though it's not him, defying age. It's not him defying gravity. It's him being in, playing a grounded, aged performance.

Reynolds: Wow. That's real acting then.

Mathews: Yeah. And then there's horror movies and kind of some smaller movies that could pop. I'm looking forward to a movie called "Wicker" with Olivia Coleman and Alex Skarsgård. It's a smaller movie, it's getting a lot of social media attention. There's one called "Other Mommy," which is a horror movie. That one's got Jessica Chastain in it. It's getting some buzz. There's a new "Sense and Sensibility" coming out. Yep. We're always ready for another one of those every 10 or 20 years.

Reynolds: Sure. And we've got "Social Reckoning," right? Yep. Aaron Sorkin's back, Mikey Madison- ... Jeremy Allen White, Jeremy Strong coming back to Zuckerberg's world. We'll see how that one does too,

Holden: Yeah.

Reynolds: All right, guys. We're at the end here, and I just wanted to give you a chance to say one last thing. 2026 Wade, has been what kind of year so far?

Holden: Exciting. I think it's exciting. I feel like there's a newfound enthusiasm for going to the movies. In the country at large and that's just great to see.

Reynolds: And Mac, how about you?

Mathews: Yeah. It's exciting. I'll just echo what Wade is saying about movies having a lot of cultural impact right now. Proving that no matter what technology kind of comes by, it's not virtual reality helmets that are still in the conversation right now so much. It's going to the movies with your friends, going to that third space, laughing together, crying together and that's still a winning combination even in this day and age.

Reynolds: No, that's good to hear. All right. Guys, that concludes this episode of "MediaTalk." I want to thank our movie guys, Wade and Mac, for sharing their Hollywood acumen and personal thoughts on many of summer's features and the upcoming fall slate. Thanks, guys, for doing this again. We really appreciate it.

Holden: It's a pleasure as always. Yeah. Yep. Thank you.

Reynolds: And this is Mike Reynolds. We'll look to do a holiday winter preview in a couple of months. In the meantime, enjoy football and the fall theatrical slates. We'll catch up soon on the next installment of "MediaTalk." Goodbye everybody.