New Delhi: After years of uncertainty around movie theatres, the 2026 summer box office has broken a record in the United States and Canada with ticket sales reaching around $4.76 billion between 1 May and 7 September 2026.
According to Rentrak, a US-based research company, the collection surpassed the previous record of $4.755 billion set in 2013, when films such as Iron Man 3, Despicable Me 2 and Man of Steel dominated theatres.
This year, Spider-Man: Brand New Day became the biggest force at the box office, remaining at the top for six consecutive weeks in North America. The film earned around $923 million domestically and $2.4 billion worldwide, putting it near Star Wars: The Force Awakens (2015), which held the domestic record.
Then came Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, which also became a major theatrical event worldwide. The epic collected around $589 million in North America and more than $1.6 billion globally.
But what makes this summer interesting is that Hollywood did not survive only on familiar franchises as it did in 2013.
Indie films such as Obsession and Backrooms found audiences despite not having the same appeal as Spider-Man or Toy Story. In the US and Canada, Obsession collected nearly $263 million, while Backrooms collected $196 million.
For the first time, every month of the summer crossed the $1 billion mark. May brought in $1.07 billion, June earned $1.08 billion, July reached $1.18 billion, and August climbed to $1.27 billion.
Gen Z also played a major role in the summer box-office comeback. Obsession had 38 per cent of its audience under 25, while Backrooms saw that figure rise to 55 per cent. Even Spider-Man: Brand New Day drew a young audience, with 51 per cent of its viewers under 25.
This summer marks a significant milestone for the international film industry, which has often worried that younger audiences, used to watching content at home, are moving away from theatres.
A Fandango survey conducted earlier this year in April found that 92 per cent of Gen Z and Millennials preferred going to the movies with other people. The survey proved that for younger audiences, cinema is becoming as much a social experience as it is about watching a film.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)