Summer Movies Set a $4.76 Billion Record. More People Went, Too.

Ticket sales topped 322 million, up from 275 million a year earlier, so the record isn't just pricier tickets.

Movie theaters in the United States took in a record $4.76 billion this summer, the largest domestic season the box office has ever posted. The trade outlet Deadline published the season tally on September 7, 2026, drawing on figures from Rentrak and the moviegoing data firm EntTelligence. The count runs from May 1 through September 7.

That money came out of pockets at a posted price. EntTelligence put the summer's average adult ticket at $13.46 and a child's at $11.51. An adult seat in a premium large format ran $18.39. Two adults choosing the big screen were out $36.78 before parking or popcorn.

The number that settles the argument isn't the gross, though. Admissions ran above 322 million, per EntTelligence figures cited by Deadline. Summer 2025 finished at 275 million.

Forty-seven million more bodies in seats isn't ticket inflation.

Rentrak told Deadline this was the first summer on record in which each of the four core months cleared $1 billion domestically:

• May, $1.07 billion
• June, $1.08 billion
• July, $1.18 billion
• August, $1.276 billion

Sony/Marvel's Spider-Man: Brand New Day led the season at $923.2 million domestic. Universal's The Odyssey took $589 million and Disney's Toy Story 5 $479.9 million. A24's Backrooms, from the filmmaker Kane Parsons, finished at $197.5 million, the distributor's highest-grossing release ever, off an opening weekend of $81.4 million that was also its biggest, the outlet reported.

The studio ledger moved hard in both directions. Universal won the season with $1.23 billion, up 63% from last summer. Sony's $1 billion was up 459%. Lionsgate's $270 million was up 296%. Warner Bros. finished at $239.3 million, down 76%.

Not everything moved. Disney/Lucasfilm's Star Wars: Mandalorian and Grogu made $177.7 million domestic and $345.3 million worldwide. Its reported production cost was $165 million, and it's the lowest-grossing of the live-action Star Wars films.

Supergirl took $72.3 million against a reported $186 million cost. Moana made $126.2 million against a reported $250 million before marketing. Titles landing between late June and early July also ran into the World Cup, which Deadline reported became an event Americans planned around because the games fell in domestic time zones.

Bill Skelly, head of Greenlight Analytics, told the outlet the occasional customer came back and kept coming: "We saw non-frequent moviegoers buying multiple tickets over the summer." He said the 15 fall titles his firm tracks are running an average of 3.5 points ahead of the same point last year.

Lionsgate's Michael, out the last weekend of April, became the studio's highest-grossing release, at $372.3 million domestic and more than $1 billion worldwide. Deadline reported that 45% of its audience said they go to the movies a few times a year or less. Adam Fogelson, the studio's motion picture chair, told the outlet that reaching that crowd took a rewrite of the playbook: "Marketers are having to learn a completely different language."

Next up is Christmas, with Disney/Marvel's Avengers: Doomsday and Warner Bros./Legendary's Dune: Part Three dated against each other. Deadline projects 2026 will finish as the biggest domestic year since Covid, with $10 billion in reach.

Source: deadline.com, retrieved September 7, 2026.