@rockmarooned Published June 10, 2026, 8:00 a.m. ET Photos: Everett Collection; Photo Illustration: Falon Wriede See more of our coverage in your search results.
Add Decider on Google More On: summer Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Double Scoop’ on Hallmark, In Which Reps From Competing Ad Agencies Try To Woo Dairy Farm Owners And Fall For Each Other Along The Way The New Trailer For ‘Snoopy Presents: A Summer Musical’ On Apple TV+ Features Charlie Brown On A Mission To Save Summer Camp What Makes Adam Sandler’s ‘Grown Ups’ Movies Such Enduring Favorites? Where Is ‘Battle Camp’ Filmed? May 2026 was one of the weirdest, wildest box office months in recent summer-movie history — and thankfully for theater owners, not because it was full of sure things bombing. Quite the opposite: the first month of the summer movie season was defined by movies performing far beyond expectations. Of course, The Devil Wears Prada 2 was expected to do well, but it was also the first summer-kickoff movie in ages — maybe ever? –—without any connection to the action, fantasy, or sci-fi genres. In the place of the Marvel movie that usually occupies that space, it notched numbers that outdid most of the post-Covid superhero releases.
The big successes only got unlikelier as the month wore on: Curry Barker’s indie horror movie Obsession has become a bona fide phenomenon, well on its way to outgrossing the latest Star Wars movie. Fellow Gen-Z horror movie Backrooms quickly set a record for distributor A24 and outearned the likes of Mortal Kombat II in the process. Meanwhile, The Sheep Detectives has become a family-friendly sleeper, while more traditional summer fare like The Mandalorian & Grogu and Masters of the Universe have disappointed.
This should make predicting the remainder of June, July, and August seem like a fool’s game. And yet, there are some movies that really feel like sure things on the horizon. So let’s go through the big titles remaining on the summer movie schedule for 2026 and make some guesses about how they’ll stack up against each other at the box office.
Stars: Ewan McGregor, Anne Hathaway
The director of cult favorites It Follows and Under the Silver Lake returns with… a big-budget family adventure?! Thankfully, David Robert Mitchell’s movie about a suburban neighborhood that appears to be transported into a Lost World-like dinosaur-heavy environment seems to retain his trademark tight visual control and period-agnostic details. It’s hard to know whether this J.J. Abrams-produced original will feel like a breath of fresh air at summer’s end or another Warner Bros. oddity like Mickey 17 or The Bride! (our box office guess splits the difference) but either way, it looks like a must-see.
Stars: Souheila Yacoub, Tandi Wright, Hunter Doohan
Sam Raimi made a near-perfect horror trilogy with the original Evil Dead films, and now seems to have settled on using the brand as testing grounds for new horror auteurs; this is the second of at least three stand-alone Evil Dead movies made in recent years (Evil Dead Wrath is already done shooting and being prepped for 2027!). Evil Dead Rise focused on the gnarlier, meaner, less slapsticky side of the series, and Burn looks to continue in a similar vein; between these and the 2013 Evil Dead remake, it kinda feels like the same strategy being repeatedly reconfigured. It also looks like a slam-bang horror ride, though, released at a time when that audience may be hungering for something particularly intense.
Speaking of horror: The big franchise entry for pretty much all of August is the sixth and latest Insidious movie, on the heels of 2023’s The Red Door, then purported to be the final entry. This one indeed will not follow the same family led by Patrick Wilson and Rose Byrne, but another family haunted by demons who inhabit the netherworld known as the Further. Here, a young mother realizes that she can visit that realm – and somehow bring demons back into our world with her, presumably making Freddy Krueger very jealous in the process. This one seems perfectly timed to grab late-summer business just as the Evil Dead sequel will be played out.
Stars: Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth
Does the original summer blockbuster director still have the juice? Steven Spielberg returns to the game with his first splashy sci-fi movie in years, and he’s brought along his old favorites — the aliens — for his fifth (!) movie about beings from another world. Disclosure Day is even less of a traditional aliens-attack or aliens-come-in-peace movie than his standard-setters War of the Worlds or Close Encounters of the Third Kind; it feels like a legacy sequel to both of those, though it’s not (as rumored, in the case of Close Encounters) formally connected to either. Though it’s visually dazzling, the movie never loses sight of its human (or beyond-human?) touch, though its loopiness could throw off some audiences. Hopefully they’ll stick with it. It’s unlikely they’ll see a better-crafted piece of summer entertainment this year, barring a certain project from the Spielberg-influenced Christopher Nolan.
Stars: Milly Alcock, Eve Ridley, Jason Momoa
Back in the 1980s, it took franchise listlessness to set in before anyone tried to make a Supergirl movie and the result was a notorious bomb (though it’s honestly kind of charming). DC cinematic overlord James Gunn, however, saw a chance to revitalize the character on the big screen via the acclaimed miniseries Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow, a True Grit-inspired story that serves as the source material for this companion piece to last summer’s Superman. Supergirl (Milly Alcock) serves as the Rooster Cogburn here, assisting a young girl with possible revenge over the death of her father by an intergalactic outlaw. Following Superman immediately with Supergirl is a risky move, but the original comic is so terrific that we can’t help but hope for the best. It doesn’t hurt that Supergirl gets almost almost all of July to herself so far as superhero stories go.
Stars: Catherine Laga’aia, Dwayne Johnson, John Tui
It was only a matter of time before the Disney live-action remake industrial complex came for our girl Moana, but we can’t help but wonder if the timing is a little weird, here. The other “live action” remake smashes were mostly sourced from ’90s material, only recently dipping into the 2000s with Lilo & Stitch last year. Moana is only a decade old, and just had a sequel in theaters in 2024; when the latter was announced, it seemed like a surefire sign that the remake would be kicked down the road. Yet here it is, the first of Disney’s 21st-century princesses (Elsa, Anna, Rapunzel, Tiana) to get this slavish-yet-disrespectful remake treatment. On the other hand, little kids are absolutely hypnotized by Moana and their parents love her too, so this will surely make some money. I just wonder if it’s going to go that full Lion King distance.
Stars: Allison Janney, Jeff Bridges, Jesse Eisenberg
Look: You put out a movie with Minions in it, whether in the Despicable Me main-line series or the Minions spinoff series, in early July, and you gross between $250 million and $350 million in the U.S. alone (sometimes more). The only possible impediment to Minions & Monsters is the seeming absence of Gru, whose odd presence in the last Minions movie likely goosed its series-best grosses. Still: It’s the Minions. Those little yellow bastards don’t miss.
Stars: Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Tom Holland, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, Zendaya, Jon Bernthal, Lupita Nyong’o, etc., etc., etc.
Christopher Nolan has spent most of his career oscillating between neo-noir, sci-fi, and historical drama. The Odyssey mixes things up a bit; it’s a fantasy-adventure movie that Nolan will direct more like a historical drama, which may account for some of the fussing the usual online dorks have done about the races of its actors. (Odysseus wasn’t real, guys. Neither is the cyclops.) The idea of Nolan and yet another of his all-star casts taking on Greek myth is a tantalizing one, especially for anyone lucky enough to live near a theater playing the movie in its native full-IMAX splendor. Nolan became the first director to shoot an entire feature film with IMAX cameras. If the man could turn Oppenheimer into a $300 million blockbuster, he shouldn’t have too much trouble with Homer.
Stars: Tom Holland, Zendaya, Mark Ruffalo
Nearly five years after Tom Holland’s Spider-Man reached a high-water mark with the multiverse-inflected Spider-Man: No Way Home, he’s back sans his Spider-pals — and any other pals, for that matter, as he’s living life as an anonymous crime fighter after casting a spell designed to make world forget all about their friendly neighborhood Spidey. But some kind of metamorphosis is afoot which may through Peter Parker’s world all out of whack again. It’s hard to judge how high this will go as a box office phenomenon; the $800 million and change for the previous film seems like it owes something to the all-star nature of its three Spider-Men, yet the character is enormously popular and this particular movie has a whole lot of summer runaway with a lighter-than-usual August. Let’s assume Spider-Mania is about to begin anew.
Stars: Tom Hanks, Joan Cusack, Tim Allen
Pixar may have a mixed track record with its other sequels and prequels, but they’ve maintained a four-movie perfect record as far as Toy Story is concerned, and now look to make it five with this latest installment pitting our old friends the toys against tech encroaching on so many kids’ attention earlier and earlier. It’s an irresistible hook, and Toy Story may just be the most universally beloved American movie franchise going. Plus, after her semi-retirement from acting, the nation hungers for Joan Cusack, and her Jessie the Cowgirl character apparently gets a major showcase here!
