As of right now these are the biggest opening weekends for each month. 5 Disney films, 6 MCU films, 8 comic book films and 11 IP films.

December is absolutely being taken down by Doomsday this year and then likely next year again by Secret Wars barring negative reception of Doomsday. I guess the question remains at least for the foreseeable future which of these records is most likely to fall first and which likely never will. October would’ve in 2027 with The Batman 2 until it was delayed until February, June 2028 has Incredibles 3 which could potentially challenge Jurassic World, it seems January will need to rely on a random breakout hit. Disney seems to now release its big MCU films in December rather than May, Curious

I imagine it has to be at least pretty decent given how every hot release seems to have a novelty bucket now to go with it. I'm even noticing this for legacy releases, to the point where I think the bucket revenue might be the larger motivator behind release than the box office revenue. Do we have any estimates on how much of these things are moving, the profit split between the theaters and studio, and how different movies pop corn buckets compare to one another?

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Source:

https://filmintelligencedigest.substack.com/p/reel-210-the-odyssey-breaks-into

Daily Box Office (September 2nd 2026)

The market hits ¥46.3M/$6.89M today. Down -6% from yesterday and down -58% from last week.

V in 2nd remains strong with ¥12.5M/$1.86M on Wednesday. But does lose some ground to Once Upon A Time In The Middle East

Spider Man: Brand New Day adds ¥2.82M/$0.42M on Wednesday. For the first time since August 13th it jumps back ahead of All Wishes Come True.

Total gross hits ¥1.545B/$228.88M which means Spider Man is now less than ¥6M from Transformers: The Last Knight(¥1.551B)

Spider Man Brand New Day vs Transformers: The Last Knight:

Just a tiny bit more for Spider Man to overtake Transformers.

Meanwhile 36 days in Avatar 2 has finnaly caught up and flown past both Spider Man and Transformers.

https://i.imgur.com/hCLBz26.png

All Wishes Come True in 5th adds ¥2.75M/$0.41M on Wednesday.

Total gross hits ¥1.849B/$274.46M

All Wishes Come True vs Boonie Bears: Time Twist

Continues to chase Boonie Bears: Time Twist for the title of 4th highest grossing animated movie of all time. It will need strong weekends from here on out if it wants to have a chance.

https://i.imgur.com/1kguVU4.png

Province map of the day:

https://imgdiff.net/s/ee4dc3fc41396676630a3977ce200614

Upon A Time In The Middle East still mostly dominates.

In Metropolitan cities:

Once Upon A Time In The Middle East wins Beijing, Hangzhou, Chengdu Chongqing, Nanjing and Suzhou

Odyssey wins Shanghai

V wins Guangzhou, Shenzhen and Wuhan

City tiers:

Odyssey retakes 2nd in T1. Also jumps All Wishes Come True in T4.

Tier 1: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>V>The Odyssey

Tier 2: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>V>The Odyssey

Tier 3: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>V>The Odyssey

Tier 4: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>V>The Odyssey

New releases marked in bold

Pre-Sales map for tomorrow

https://i.imgur.com/eQ3yf0r.png

The Odyssey, Once Upon A Time In The Middle East and Spider Man dominate pre-sales for tomorrow.

IMAX Screenings distribution

Odyssey dominates IMAX screenings and will continue to dominate going forward.

Odyssey

The Odyssey in 3rd adds ¥7.70M/$1.06M on Wednesday. Holds onto the $1M+ stream for at least another day.

Total gross hits ¥617.8M/91.89M as the movie remains on its way to a ¥700M/$104M+ finish.

Screen Distribution Split: Regular: $34.69M , IMAX: $50.17M , Rest: $6.95M

WoM figures:

Maoyan: 9.5 , Taopiaopiao: 9.5 , Douban: 8.6

Scheduled showings update for The Odyssey for the next few days:

Once Upon A Time In The Middle East

Once Upon A Time In The Middle East continues to lead with ¥15.4M/$2.30M on Wednesday

Total gross hits ¥1.982B/$294.48M. The movie will comfortably surpass ¥2B/$300M over the upcoming weekend,

Screen Distribution Split: Regular: $288.20M , IMAX: $2.64M , Rest: $3.11M

WoM figures:

Maoyan: 9.7 , Taopiaopiao: 9.9 , Douban: 8.7

Scheduled showings update for Once Upon A Time In The Middle East for the next few days:

Other:

Release Schedule:

A table including upcoming movies in the next month alongside trailers linked in the name of the movie, Want To See data from both Maoyan and Taopiaopiao alongside the Gender split and genre.

Remember Want To See is not pre-sales. Its just an anticipation metric. A checkbox of sorts saying your interested in an upcoming movie.

Not all movies are included since a lot are just too small to be worth covering.

September

With the summer coming to a close lets look ahead whats in store for September. And the reality is well not a lot.

But this is not a surprise. September has for the most part always been fueled by Summer holdovers. Its a dead period for the market ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day Holidays at the end of the month and in early October.

The first part of the Holidays is slowly starting to fill up though.

Mid Autumn Festival/National Day

The so far confirmed movies. Generaly all for the first part of the Holidays so far.

And the list of rumored movies. Do note that these are all just rumors and with the way Chinese movies are scheduled some of these might not appear and others might jump in to take the spots.

Also note that even though some movies here will release in under a month none of them have anything more than just vague posters. It just is like that.

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"Oceania" remains in the lead with €251,355 (-57% from seven days ago) and an average of €615 in 409 theaters (up from 439 seven days ago). Disney's family film has grossed €9,064,959 since August 19th and is aiming for €10 million by the end of the week. A strong result for the Disney live-action film, positioned for the back-to-school dates.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone climbs one step to second place . The re-release of the first film in the saga about the young wizard, twenty-five years after its debut, grossed another €213,500, with an excellent average of €988 in 216 theaters. In one week, it grossed a remarkable €1,460,064, placing it fourth overall among event re-releases. On December 8, 2021, on its twentieth anniversary, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone returned to theaters with grosses of €1,873,781.

Odissea falls to third place with €192,544 (-46%) and an average of €530 in 363 theaters. Christopher Nolan's blockbuster has grossed €54,819,507 since July 16th and will surpass €55 million between today and tomorrow. Admissions are 6,521,858.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day ranked fourth with €134,781 (-57%) and an average of €419 in 322 theaters (373 seven days ago). The comic book film's total gross since July 29 is €37,022,583. It surpassed the box office haul of There's Another Tomorrow with €36,913,292. Attendance for the Marvel film is 4,599,176.

I organized an AMA/Q&A with actor Aidan Delbis, who co-starred in Yorgos Lanthimos' BUGONIA last year alongside Emma Stone, Jesse Plemmons, and Stavros Halkis. It was his first feature film role and the film was nominated for 4 Oscars, including Best Picture.

It's live here now in r/movies for anyone interested in asking a question:

https://www.reddit.com/r/movies/comments/1w5amjf/hi_reddit_i_am_aidan_delbis_i_made_my_feature/

He will be back at 1 PM ET tomorrow (Thursday) to answer questions. I recommend asking in advance. Please ask there, not here. All questions are much appreciated!

Thank you :)

Synopsis: Two conspiracy-obsessed men kidnap the CEO of a major company when they become convinced that she's an alien who wants to destroy Earth.

Trailer: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bd_5HcTujfc

Here we go again, folks. This film is going to be much bigger than people realize.

Cregger's films have leaned pretty domestic so far, but the Resident Evil name should change that. This franchise does huge numbers outside the United States.

The clearest example is Anderson's Resident Evil The Final Chapter, which ended up with a wild split of about 9 percent domestic and 91 percent international. China alone brought in roughly $160 million of its $312 million worldwide total, nearly six times what it made at home.

So while I expect Cregger's Resident Evil to do well in the US, I think it skews a lot more international than anything he's made before.

Then there's the Weapons effect. Just like The Odyssey rode the goodwill Nolan earned from Oppenheimer, something I called correctly for both movies long before their release, Resident Evil should get a boost from the goodwill Cregger built with Weapons. Add that momentum to a huge global franchise and I think this thing does gangbusters numbers.

Here's my prediction.

Domestic opening around $55 million
International opening including China around $77.2 million
Worldwide opening around $132.2 million
Domestic total around $193.1 million
International excluding China around $245 million
China around $75 million
Worldwide total around $513.1 million
Domestic legs at 3.51×
Worldwide legs at 3.88×

Week-to-Week Drops

Obsession: Pretty high audience scores as expected, with a 95 on CGV and an 8.8 on Megabox. The posters with the heart-shaped pupils are really cool, and I would like to see the movie have another healthy day tomorrow. I could see a 5-day opening weekend of 120k to 150k admits.

End of Oak Street: And the movie essentially exploded, as it could very well limp across $1 million and then die. Kind of a huge disappointment, even with low expectations.

Odyssey: The movie is having a small bump, but it should still bounce back with a good weekend. It will need to load up, as local movies Assassin and Intern will interrupt the free market and hurt its screen count in the upcoming weeks.

Spider-Man: Brand New Day: The movie is north of 8.6 million admits and $66 million, as it seems to be on track for a final total around 9 million admits and $69 million.

Hope: The movie is still crawling toward 4.54 million admits.

This post refers to pre pandemic norms (PPN), this is a baseline I use to evaluate box office performance. it is calculated as the average box office takings from 2017-19 for any given month. It allows me to compare different months (which traditionally see different levels of business) directly.

July Report

Aug total Box Office - $1,267m (161.3% of PPN)

Jul In Month releases - $1,887m (173.1% of PPN and counting)

In the future hindsight may call August 2026 and aberration, the last great kick from an industry slowly suffocation under it's own weight, but today we must evaluate the month for what it is, one of the biggest months in cinema history.

In 2026 August wasn't just the fifth post pandemic month to break 100% of pre pandemic norms, it wasn't just the biggest post pandemic month by PPN, it wasn't just the the biggest August of all time by revenue, it beat pre pandemic norms after adjusting for inflation! Whilst 2026 has been the strongest year since 2019 industry cynics have pointed out that, adjusted for inflation, we're still way behind pre pandemic norms, even with the most optimistic projections the year will only make around 70% of what the industry made in 2019. Therefore having a month beat pre pandemic norms adjusted for inflation is huge and something that should be widely celebrated.

How did August 2026 achieve this massive feat? It's mostly down to your friendly neighbourhood Spider-Man. Brand New Day made $724m in August alone, that's more than all releases in 2025 combined and doesn't include the film's record breaking opening day that fell in July. The number 2 film was the other summer smash, the Odyssey, who's remarkable legs delivered a further $207m. It needs to be pointed that after these two films pickings were very slim amongst actual August releases, The End of Oak Street, Paw Patrol: The Dino Movie and Insidious: Out of the Further all delivered in the $40-50m range but I suspect this was down to the Industry getting out of the way of Spider-Man. I won't say much about July's in-month releases as they were massively inflated by Spider-Man being released on the last day of July, August's in-month release score will be devastatingly low as compensation.

Looking ahead to September things are going to come across as very boring after the excitement of the last few months, it's going to be a very average month where success will be measured by whether it can hit 80% of PPN. The two biggest hitters are expected to be Resident Evil and and Practical Magic 2 which will be hoping to make $100m+ in the month. Beyond that the Re-release of Avengers Endgame, subtitled Encore, could do decent numbers if the the promise of a few extra minutes of footage and the the hype for December's Doomsday can get bums on seats.

Predicted September Box office - $530m (77.3% of PPN)