Movie Theaters Rebound: 2026’s Box Office Comeback Explained

Imax CEO Richard Gelfond has no illusions about his newfound popularity. People are calling his phone and cozying up to him like he could have gotten them inside Taylor Swift’s wedding at Madison Square Garden. But no, what they really want is a golden ticket to a preview of “The Odyssey,” Christopher Nolan’s epic that was shot entirely with Imax cameras. Forecasting the frenzy, Imax put opening-weekend tickets on sale a full year in advance and saw them sell out in a matter of hours. 

“I’ve gotten calls from people I haven’t talked to in years!” Gelfond says with a chuckle. “It’s pretty apparent the prospect of getting ‘Odyssey’ tickets in Imax has reunited me with old friends — and made me new ones.”  

It’s not just Homer fever that has America going to the movies again. For the first time since COVID threatened theaters with extinction, Hollywood is letting out a huge sigh of relief. Audiences have danced along with “Michael,” dressed in couture to see “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and returned again and again to have the shit scared out of them by “Obsession.” Popcorn is popping at concession stands (and moviegoers are shelling out extra to consume the buttery goodness in collectible themed buckets), teens are turning out in force (and sharing the fun on TikTok) and studio accountants are giddy as the list of blockbusters keeps growing. Yes, people have fallen back in love with the silver screen.   

“I am constantly having conversations with studio heads, and you can sense an optimism that they haven’t felt in a long time,” says Seth Rogen, who stars in this summer’s comedy “The Invite.” “It reminds me a little bit more of how it felt 15 years ago, in that there’s a belief that they can win again.”  

 At a time when nothing is guaranteed, Hollywood has scored with familiar franchises and family films, including “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” the year’s first billion-dollar blockbuster; “Toy Story 5,” which has raked in nearly $900 million to date and is expected to overtake “Toy Story 4” ($1.07 billion) as the largest in the 31-year-old series; and “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” which outgrossed its predecessor’s lifetime haul in just a few weeks and became a rare hit comedy with $688 million.  

 Yet some of the year’s most unconventional stories are among the biggest successes. “Project Hail Mary,” a cerebral astronaut epic starring Ryan Gosling, defied expectations with $683 million globally to become Amazon MGM’s first certified smash. “Michael,” after a chaotic production and multiple delays, was a crowd-pleaser, becoming the first biopic to cross $1 billion in ticket sales. “Obsession,” a twisted romantic thriller from newcomer Curry Barker, has been a wildly profitable smash with $426 million and counting against a minuscule $750,000 production budget. The film broke records after an unprecedented box office run, with second, third and fourth weekends that were larger than its debut. Somehow, none of the mania over “Obsession” diminished demand for “Backrooms,” a low-budget horror sensation that hails from 20-year-old YouTube creator Kane Parsons. “Backrooms” put projections to shame, securing A24’s largest debut yet with a staggering $81 million (way above Timothée Chalamet’s “Marty Supreme”). It’s now the indie company’s highest-grossing release ever with more than $363 million.  

“What we needed to happen has finally happened,” says Michael Kustermann, CEO of the popular dine-in cinema chain Alamo Drafthouse. “There’s not just a good pipeline of content, but a diverse balance within the slate. That’s what we’ve been missing.”  

 But audiences are back, baby. Revenues for the summer are in line with those of 2019, a banner year for the business, and overall ticket sales are 10% above the same point in 2025, according to Rentrak. At this pace, yearly domestic grosses are expected to hit $10 billion for the first time since the onset of the pandemic. 

 Two weekends after “The Odyssey” (which opens on July 17) comes “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” a sequel to one of the biggest pandemic-era films, and exhibitors are preparing for a Champagne problem: making sure there are enough auditoriums to accommodate the crowds for two major tentpoles. “We’re having to add screens and showtimes — a lot of early and late-night screenings,” says Kustermann. “It’s unlike any time over the last couple of years.”  

 The reversal in fortune came when movies were getting pushed to the fringes of cultural conversations. There was a growing sense on Wall Street, and even at the studios, that cinemas couldn’t compete with Netflix and YouTube. There were also fears that younger generations viewed going to theaters as hopelessly outdated — a throwback to a time before thousands of movies and shows could be accessed on demand from home.   

 Everyone had it wrong. Younger moviegoers are driving the comeback. A recent report by Fandango found that 87% of Gen Zers and 82% of millennials saw at least one movie in a cinema in the past 12 months, compared with 70% of Gen Xers and 58% of baby boomers. Richard Linklater, the Oscar-nominated director of “Boyhood” and “Dazed and Confused,” has witnessed this phenomenon at the Austin Film Society, the nonprofit Texas theater he founded in 1985. “Just when you thought all these young people who grew up on TikTok are done with movies, it turns out they like to go with their friends,” Linklater says. “The theatrical film experience has been under threat for 80 years, and it always withstands the ups and downs because we are communal beings.”  

 Others in Hollywood believe that theaters are thriving precisely because they offer a chance to unplug from smartphones and other devices. “People have couch saturation or couch fatigue,” says Colin Farrell, who will be seen in 2028’s “The Batman: Part II.” “As much as it’s nice to stay at home and be entertained by the quality stuff that’s coming through the streaming services, I think people realize that it’s actually lovely to call an Uber and plan an evening around going to a movie theater.”  

Antoine Fuqua, the director of “Michael,” was thrilled when he attended screenings of the Michael Jackson biopic and watched the crowd groove with the King of Pop. It made him feel like audiences had “found the joy” in going to the movies again. “I remember going to ‘Star Wars’ and ‘Jaws’ with my father. Everyone talked about them in school and over the summer,” Fuqua says. “If nothing else, this summer is showing us that people still yearn for that connective experience.”  

 A year ago, Netflix chief Ted Sarandos declared that cinemas were an “outmoded idea for most people.” If you want proof that that was misguided, just look at how much money theaters are making from their popcorn buckets. It’s a trend that took off in 2024 with the release of sandworm containers for “Dune: Part Two,” which went viral with their suggestive open-mouthed design. Now, nearly every major movie has its own themed popcorn box — from haute couture handbags for “Devil Wears Prada 2” to a Trojan horse for “The Odyssey.” Prices range from $20 to $80, and the boxes can command nearly double those figures on eBay. “Three years ago, we didn’t sell any movie-themed buckets. This year, it’s going to be more than a $100 million business for us,” says Adam Aron, CEO of AMC Theatres, the world’s largest chain. “It’s become part of the fun of going to the movies.”  

But it took a long time for the business to rebound. After the COVID lockdowns ended, people avoided their local cinemas, afraid of contracting the virus. Audiences eventually returned for a few blockbusters, like 2021’s “Spider-Man: No Way Home” and 2022’s “Top Gun: Maverick” — but not much else. Then the 2023 labor strikes created severe production delays, delivering another damaging setback. Studios weren’t able to produce much for nearly a year as negotiations wore on, which meant there simply weren’t enough new movies to entice patrons.  

“People don’t understand how extreme the destruction of the strike was, and how because of it everything got delayed,” says Tom Rothman, chairman of Sony Pictures.  

The actors and writers strikes also came as “Barbenheimer,” the portmanteau memorializing the simultaneous 2023 releases of “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie,” had started to get people reenergized for going to cinemas again.

“We lost momentum,” says Peter Levinsohn, chairman of global distribution for Universal Entertainment. “We not only shut down production, but we essentially shut down marketing and promotion because actors couldn’t talk about their work. It takes a lot of time to reboot the whole thing again and bring back audiences.”

Three years later, film production has finally stabilized. In 2026, there will be 115 to 120 wide releases, which is roughly in line with the 120 films that major studios debuted in 2019 and up from the 94 that Hollywood fielded in 2024. Not only have legacy companies like Warner Bros., Sony and Paramount increased their volume, but new distributors like “Christy” producer Black Bear have launched and Amazon MGM Studios has decided to return to the theatrical business after focusing much of its attention on streaming. This year it will produce 13 theatrical releases, compared with three in 2025.   

Along with the greater output, box office watchers have been encouraged by the sheer number of surprise hits (like “Project Hail Mary,” “Obsession” and “Backrooms”). That’s giving filmmakers confidence that studios may be more open to backing unorthodox stories that they now believe could be popular.  

“Someone once told me that a studio executive makes decisions out of either fear or greed,” says Christopher Miller, the co-director of “Project Hail Mary.” “You want them to be making decisions out of greed because when people make decisions out of fear, that’s when things get bad. That’s when they make conservative choices about making things that feel like things that have come before. And what we’re finding is people don’t want to see the thing they’ve seen 100 times before. They want to see something new.”  

Not every movie has resonated with audiences. Interestingly, many of the year’s biggest flops have been from once-dominant genres. The recent failure of “Supergirl,” which was startlingly earthbound with $115 million worldwide against a $170 million budget, signals that superhero movies are no longer the most popular game in town. Yes, “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” and December’s “Avengers: Doomsday” will be juggernauts, but they feature heroes who are household names. Films that center on lesser-known comic book protagonists, like last year’s “Thunderbolts” and “The Fantastic Four: First Steps,” are failing to draw the crowds that used to show up to see anyone in a mask or cape. 

 It’s not just superhero movies that are struggling. “Star Wars” spinoff “The Mandalorian and Grogu,” the lowest earning of the franchise with $340 million, and “Masters of the Universe,” which tapped out at $112 million and cost a staggering $250 million, were two properties that bombed, underscoring the reality that brand recognition alone isn’t enough to fill seats. 

“The common thread in terms of what’s working is freshness and excellence,” says Phil Lord, co-director of “Project Hail Mary.” “There’s always an appetite for great movies.”   

A number of big films are on the horizon, some of which may fall short of greatness. However, there do seem to be enough major releases to keep multiplexes full, particularly over Thanksgiving and Christmas, when spinoffs and sequels to “Dune,” “The Avengers,” “Meet the Parents” and “The Hunger Games” will open. 

“The end of the year looks very strong,” says Eric Handler, an exhibition industry analyst with Roth Capital Partners. “And the holidays are positively loaded.”    

Movie theater owners have long dreamed about this year’s turnaround, but they worry that their hard-fought revival may be fleeting. First there’s the looming sale of Warner Bros. to Paramount Skydance, which analysts and exhibitors believe will result in fewer new films to showcase. There’s precedent: After Disney’s 2019 purchase of 20th Century Fox left the industry short a major studio, output from the renamed 20th Century Studios shrank dramatically. Paramount Skydance CEO David Ellison has promised the joint media company will put even more movies in theaters — upwards of 30 a year. Yet rivals doubt that volume is realistic, especially as the company seeks to find $6 billion in cost savings by eliminating “duplicative operations across the business.” Plus, no other studio delivers that kind of output — Universal releases the most movies of any entertainment company, with roughly 20 films a year, followed by Disney with 16.   

“We’re very concerned,” says Michael O’Leary, head of Cinema United, the movie theater industry trade group. “One of the legacy studios that has been a pillar of this industry for over 100 years is going away. The recent past tells us that when you have mergers like this, production goes down and fewer movies get released, and that is exactly what this industry doesn’t need.”  

Another big debate is about the theatrical window — the industry term for the length of time a film plays exclusively on the big screen. For decades, every movie remained in cinemas for at least 90 days before heading to digital platforms. But in 2020, during the worst of the pandemic, the one-size-fits-all model for theatrical distribution was jettisoned. Lacking leverage, exhibitors like AMC Theatres and Regal Cinemas struck deals with Universal that allowed the studio to put a film on demand after roughly 16 days. That led to mass experimentation across the industry, including Warner Bros.’ ill-fated strategy to release its entire 2021 theatrical slate concurrently on HBO Max. In the end, studios found they were cannibalizing their own business.  

“It was a fundamental misunderstanding of the economic underpinnings of the ecosystem,” says Rothman. “There remains nothing that commands cultural urgency and attention like a successful theatrical film.”  

Studios have mostly embraced Rothman’s point of view and recognize that having movies in theaters raises their profile and enhances their value when they debut on home entertainment platforms. That’s led to another important pivot: Companies like Disney, Paramount and Universal have now coalesced around a 45-day window.  

“It’s incredibly important for the industry to unify around a theatrical window so there’s no confusion,” says Josh Greenstein, co-chair of Paramount Pictures. “The audience needs to understand the only place they can see a film for the first 45 days is in a movie theater. There’s no ‘Let me just wait’ if they want to be part of the conversation.” 

Two decades ago, people went to the movies as a social activity and weren’t picky about what was playing on-screen. Now, with seemingly endless entertainment options available to them, audiences are more discerning about what they’ll leave the house to see.

“It’s not as simple as people coming out of the movie and saying they liked it,” says Adam Fogelson, Lionsgate Motion Picture Group chair. “That may not be sufficient to motivate someone who wasn’t already planning to buy a ticket. When an audience is able to say to their friends that they love the experience of being in a theater for any particular film, that carries a ton of weight.”

And if the early word on a new movie is negative on social media, they won’t come out at all.   

“If a movie isn’t great or isn’t perceived to be great, it doesn’t open strong. And if it does open, it could fizzle very quickly,” says Alan Bergman, chairman of Disney Entertainment Studios. “Long gone are the days where you can have a movie that’s not very good and still get a week or two out of it. By Friday night, it’s out there if people like it or not.”  

Some audiences haven’t returned in full force, and others might go more often if there were more movies made for them. Hollywood hasn’t figured out how to get moviegoers over 40 back. Gen X and baby boomers showed up for all-audience films like “The Devil Wears Prada 2” and “Michael,” but ignored pictures that were pitched at them, like the war movie “Pressure” with Brendan Fraser and the Lesley Manville romantic drama “Midwinter Break.” Meanwhile, industry watchers believe there aren’t enough films geared to women or Black or Hispanic ticket buyers, three demographics that often turn out for movies that are produced with them in mind.   

“Not every movie has to be an event for everyone. You just need it to be an event for someone,” says Dana Goldberg, co-chair of Paramount Pictures. “As long as we can identify the group that’s going to turn out, and provided you make it on a budget that is reasonable for that group, if they get really excited, you can broaden out, and that’s when you’re seeing some of these outsized hits.”  

Aline Brosh McKenna, who wrote “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” hopes that unexpected wins like last year’s female-skewing “The Housemaid,” a $35 million production that will be hugely profitable after racking up $400 million, and this spring’s “The Drama” — a dark comedy starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson that grossed an impressive $131 million — will inspire studios to consider more than just men when they’re greenlighting a slate of films. “Male audiences are still the default, and I think that does the audience a disservice,” McKenna says. “I have a running joke that I’m going to call my company Big Surprise, because it’s always such a ‘big surprise’ when women turn out. Women drive a lot of socializing, so I think there’s never enough geared toward them.”  

Whose fault is it? “The patriarchy,” she says. 

Since theaters emerged from lockdown, there’s been a fierce debate about when — or if —the business will return to pre-pandemic levels. In the Before Times, the domestic box office regularly hit $11 billion annually as franchises like “Fast & Furious,” “The Avengers” and “Harry Potter” filled theaters. But some executives and creatives feel that cinemas don’t need to keep chasing what they once were.   

  “Without a doubt, we have turned a corner, but I also don’t believe we can just look backwards and try to replicate what we were before COVID,” says Courtenay Valenti, head of film, streaming and theatrical at Amazon MGM Studios. “We have to be very forward-looking, stay nimble and keep innovating, because the audiences of 2026 are not like they were in 2018 or 2019.”  

There have been turning points throughout Hollywood history when an old order collapsed and was replaced by something cooler and more provocative. Take the 1960s, when the studio system imploded as epic costume dramas like “Cleopatra” and lavish musicals like “Doctor Dolittle” and “Paint Your Wagon” were costly debacles. In their place, films like “Bonnie and Clyde” and “The Graduate” came to define the culture by speaking to a roiling anger over the war in Vietnam and American politics.   

A similar phenomenon happened in the late ’80s and early ’90s with the rise of the indie film movement. There was a sense that Hollywood had abandoned its artistic daring by focusing on films like “Days of Thunder” and “The Last Boy Scout” that were too loud, too bloated, too crassly commercial. Their overindulgence allowed filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Steven Soderbergh and Robert Rodriguez to emerge and find an audience for scrappy and transgressive stories. The success of “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” which were made by 20-something directors, and “Iron Lung,” a sci-fi horror film from YouTuber Mark “Markiplier” Fischbach, may signal that a rising generation is poised to take the movie business in a revolutionary direction.   

“There have always been periodic moments of refreshment in this business,” Rothman says. “It’s not just that there have been some internet-driven hits; it’s how strongly younger audiences are responding. There are new voices being heard in exciting ways, and that’s likely to affect what Hollywood itself does.”

With younger audiences driving ticket sales, filmmakers believe that movies need to reflect their tastes and values.  

“Young people can sniff cynicism and when a movie was made solely out of a desire to make money or to satisfy studio conglomerate interests,” says Miller. “They want to see things that were made out of passion and love.”     

It also helps that when these filmmakers were starting out on YouTube, they needed to find a way to bolster their viewership without relying on global marketing campaigns. That gave them a more direct relationship with their audience and a clearer understanding of what people want to see. Their fans are clamoring for stories that speak to their hopes and fears, rather than adaptations of rickety IP like He-Man and “Star Wars,” which were popular when their parents were kids.   

“The audience was out there; it’s just that we were making the wrong movies for them,” says Jason Blum, whose company Blumhouse Atomic Monster produced “Obsession” and “Backrooms.”   

The popularity of those films has set off a mad hunt to unearth the next Parsons or Barker. In recent weeks, studios and producers have announced a wave of projects rooted in the internet, including a movie based on the creepy digital phenomenon “Siren Head” and a big-screen version of the YouTube series “Mandela Catalogue” that will be produced by Steven Spielberg.   

But Blum isn’t sure this scramble is wise.   

“It’s not just about finding people who are popular on YouTube or TikTok and throwing a bunch of money at them,” he says. “The directors of ‘Backrooms’ and ‘Obsession’ toiled over their scripts for years. You can’t rush things. The movies have to be good, and that takes time and effort.”  

Marc Malkin contributed to this report.