“Project Hail Mary” opened last weekend to more than $80 million at the domestic box office, the biggest opening for a nonfranchise, nonsequel film since “Oppenheimer” in 2023. For all the fretting about the decline of movie theaters, people apparently know where their local theater is just as long as they’re given films they want to go and see. It’s also the first major theatrical success for Amazon MGM Studios, which formed in 2023. (Despite my former association with Amazon, I don’t enjoy any benefit from the film’s success.)
It’s not just a one-off hit, either — the domestic box office in general in 2026 is up a robust 20 percent from the year before, driven by hits like the mid-December releases “Avatar: Fire and Ash” and “The Housemaid,” along with the year’s “Scream 7,” “Wuthering Heights” and others.
A possible reason for this rebound? Movies are starting to feel fun again.
Eras change. Vibes, as they say, shift. In 1969, the low-budget counterculture road movie “Easy Rider” was the fourth-biggest box office hit — edged out for third place by the low-budget, X-rated “Midnight Cowboy.” By contrast, “Paint Your Wagon,” a big-budget, star-driven musical, tanked. That was the end of an era: Musicals were essentially over and the cinematic 1970s had begun, one year early.
We’ve had other eras since — the blockbusters of the 1980s, the Sundance generation of the 1990s. But the most recent era, which started in the wake of Donald Trump’s election in 2016 and went into overdrive after 2020, was one in which political and social messaging were what seemed to matter most in Hollywood.
Sex, erotic thrillers and humor were on the outs. Romantic comedies essentially disappeared. From 2012 to 2016, roughly 67 comedy films with budgets over $5 million were released a year on average. From 2017 to 2023 (excluding the Covid year of 2020), that average dropped by a third, to some 45 comedies a year. It was an era when you could make “Nomadland” — a best picture Oscar winner in 2021 — but championing the ribaldry of a film like “Bridesmaids” seemed suddenly out of the question.
The Dionysian elements of popular entertainment — irreverence, sexual frankness and broad, even scatological humor — were cast aside as the industry sought to correct historic wrongs and resist current ones. An unmistakable censoriousness and fear of saying or doing the wrong thing seemed to settle over the creative process. Cultural and political considerations played an outsize role — not only in what movies got made, but in how success for these movies was defined.
What didn’t seem to matter as much? Making sure that audiences were filling seats.
Some might object that comedy in particular waned in that era because the genre, in the words of the industry, “doesn’t travel,” meaning it lacks international appeal. But the international appeal of comedy didn’t suddenly change in 2017. Hollywood’s tastes did.
That era might finally be ending.
Hollywood loves box-office data, and the recent data suggests that there are two paths forward for the industry. One path is the prestige message films that dominated the most recent Oscars, exemplified by this year’s best picture winner, “One Battle After Another” (although that movie, with its chase scenes and stoner jokes, had a crowd-pleasing element). The other path is represented by eight-cylinder entertainment like “Project Hail Mary” and “The Housemaid” — as well as pulpy films like “Weapons” and “Sinners” (which had its political notions, but you could enjoy it for the music and vampires).
If this new era of fun has a figurehead, it’s the actress Sydney Sweeney, who almost single-handedly revived the romantic comedy with “Anyone but You” and the erotic thriller with “The Housemaid,” two genres that 10 years ago had been cinematically left for dead.
Hollywood was built on entertainment. A big part of what makes entertaining movies work is that they engage audiences in a way that feels contemporary but would be completely recognizable to Billy Wilder or Frank Capra. These films spring from the belief that movies matter in and of themselves — and not just as a means to influence society.
The question is not whether Hollywood should make serious or socially conscious films — it should, and it will. But the success of “Project Hail Mary” and other recent films reminds us that in our new era, whatever it will be called, people appear to be responding to fun.
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