July was solid, but on the disappointing side. The big hero of the month was The Odyssey, opening to a Nolan post-Batman record $124M domestic and $265M worldwide. It’s too early to tell yet, but the floor looks like $375M domestic at this point and could very easily sail past $400M and even $450M. That’s a huge win that surges past the very top end of our already high expectations.
Unfortunately, the other two big potential blockbusters of the month were much softer than expected. Minions & Monsters is tracking to end under $200M domestic, much lower than our hoped-for $300M and way down from the franchise average. Moana was even worse, opening to just $43M and should end under $150M domestically, at least $100M under what we were expecting. Toy Story 5 proved solid padding for the month but overall, it was a mixed bag.
August is built almost the opposite way. Where July spread its bets across three genuine blockbusters, August has essentially one — and it happens to be (and by a wide margin) the single biggest movie of the year so far. Spider-Man: Brand New Day opens on the last day of July and detonates across the first weekend of August, and nearly everything else on the calendar is either a July holdover (The Odyssey) or a mid-size release smart enough to counterprogram around it. This is a top-heavy month in the extreme.
The shape of August comes down to a few questions:
- Just how big is Spider-Man: Brand New Day — the biggest opening of 2026 is a near-certainty, but is it a $200M debut or a $250M-and-up, No-Way-Home-tier event?
- Do July’s giants — The Odyssey especially, which plays a solid chunk of its run in August — have the legs to keep the non-Spidey weekends from cratering?
- Can any of the counterprogrammers — Super Troopers 3, Insidious: Out of the Further, PAW Patrol, Coyote vs. Acme — carve out real money in Spider-Man’s shadow?
The math is lopsided. Spider-Man alone should bank the bulk of a $230M+ opening on its way to a minimum $600M domestic finish (conservatively). Add The Odyssey’s third, fourth, fifth and sixth weekends, plus the tail end of Toy Story 5, Moana and Minions & Monsters, and you’re already near $800M before anything else releases. August has a genuine shot at $1B, which is rare and would be barely down from July.
Put simply: Spider-Man: Brand New Day is tracking to post the single biggest opening weekend of 2026 — bigger than Toy Story 5’s franchise-record $160M, bigger than Nolan’s Odyssey, bigger than anything the year has produced. That one debut essentially is August’s box office story. For context on the ceiling: Tom Holland’s last solo outing, No Way Home, opened to $260.1M in December 2021. Brand New Day won’t have that film’s once-in-a-generation multiverse hook, but it’s the first Spider-Man in nearly four years, and presales have reportedly outpaced every 2026 release to date.
Spillover · Late JulyWhat July is handing to August
This is the largest carryover we’ve charted all year, and it isn’t close. The Odyssey only opened July 17 — which means weekend 3 and beyond land in August. If it holds the way a Nolan film typically does, that’s another $150M+ of August dollars from one holdover alone. Toy Story 5, Minions & Monsters, and Moana will also add maybe a combined $50M or so in August as the default late-summer family films that should hold well. That’s probably it for holdovers, but it’s a very good lineup to carry over from July.
Weekend 1 · Jul 31–Aug 2Spider-Man swings in
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
This is the whole month. Spider-Man: Brand New Day is Tom Holland’s fourth solo outing and the first Spider-Man since No Way Home ($260.1M open, $814M domestic) nearly four years ago. Destin Daniel Cretton (Shang-Chi) directs; Zendaya, Sadie Sink, Jon Bernthal and Mark Ruffalo round out a cast that leans into the street-level, Daredevil-adjacent corner of the MCU. The presale pace has reportedly outrun every other release this year — no small feat in a year that already produced a $160M Toy Story 5 debut. At this point, it’s hard to imagine anything under $200M opening, which is most likely the current floor. We see it higher, potentially at $250M+ and with a shot at getting close to No Way Home’s $260M debut. Whatever number it hits, it’s a lock to anchor August, carry the month’s floor almost single-handedly, and hand exhibitors their biggest weekend of the year. The only real bear case is if reviews and audience reception turn out bad, in which case it might have to only settle for about a $550–600M domestic final — still by far the biggest of the year so far. Of course, it could go much higher than that. Either way, it’s going to be a monster.
Weekend 2 · Aug 7–9Counterprogramming against Spidey’s weekend 2
Super Troopers 3
The purest counterprogramming play of the month: drop an R-rated comedy into Spider-Man’s second weekend and scoop up every adult who isn’t seeing a superhero movie or rewatching The Odyssey. Super Troopers 3 is the long-awaited threequel, and the comp is clean — Super Troopers 2 opened to $14.7M on a wave of cult goodwill in 2018 before fading fast to $30.6M total (these are front-loaded, fanbase-driven runs, not legs plays). Tracking has the new one in that same $10–16M neighborhood. On a cheap budget under a modest Searchlight release, an opening in the teens is a perfectly fine result; but of course it could go lower like Jackass just did if the nostalgia doesn’t work. Either way, it’s more of a filler for August.
Weekend 3 · Aug 14–16The pups take on the tentpole
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie
With Spider-Man in its third weekend and no other new family option in the market for a month, PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie has the young kids crowd essentially to itself. PAW Patrol: The Mighty Movie opened to $22.7M in 2023 on its way to $67M domestic, and the first film managed $13M in 2021 despite a same-day streaming release. Tracking lands Dino Movie right in that Mighty Movie range at $18–26M. On these micro-budgets — the series is famously cheap to make — a low-$20Ms opening and a leggy family multiple is a quiet win for Paramount, and a useful bit of mid-August counterprogramming while the tentpole slate takes a breather.
Weekend 4 · Aug 21–23Horror returns to the Further
Insidious: Out of the Further
Horror has been one of 2026’s best stories — Backrooms smashed the A24 record at $81.5M, and cheap scares have over-delivered all summer. Insidious: Out of the Further is the fifth chapter in Blumhouse’s $730M franchise, with Jacob Chase directing and Lin Shaye returning to the role that started it all. Long-range tracking hasn’t fully firmed up this far out, so treat our number as comp-anchored rather than a published forecast: the franchise’s recent entries have opened strong for their budgets — Insidious: The Red Door debuted north of $32M in 2023 — and a late-August horror sequel slot with no direct genre competition points to an opening in the $20–35M range. On a typical sub-$20M Blumhouse budget, even the low end is a healthy profit.
Weekend 5 · Aug 28–30A coyote finally gets his day
Coyote vs. Acme
The most unusual release of the month, and the one with the widest range of outcomes. Coyote vs. Acme is the live-action/animation Looney Tunes hybrid that Warner Bros. infamously shelved for a tax write-off in 2023 before Ketchup Entertainment rescued it — reportedly for around $50M — and dated it for the pre-Labor Day weekend. Dave Green directs; Will Forte, John Cena and Lana Condor headline. The upside is real: enormous built-in awareness from the shelving saga, a family-friendly nostalgia hook, and the four-day Labor Day frame with only holdovers for company. The risk is distribution muscle — Ketchup is a small player, and its last Looney Tunes outing, The Day the Earth Blew Up, opened to only a few million. There’s no published long-range forecast yet, so our $6–18M is a deliberately wide, comp-based guess that hinges almost entirely on how many screens Ketchup can secure and how hard it markets.
The Bottom LineOne colossus, a long tail, no safety net
August 2026 is the inverse of July. July had a high floor built from three separate blockbusters and a Nolan-shaped ceiling. August has a high floor built from exactly one film — and it happens to be the biggest of the year. Spider-Man: Brand New Day plus the enormous July holdover slate (The Odyssey above all) essentially guarantees a very strong month before a single mid-size release opens.
The ceiling is Spider-Man’s alone. If it opens $230M+, holds like a marquee Marvel title, and the Odyssey legs stay strong, August comfortably clears $900M. The one thing to watch is the absence of a safety net: unlike July, there’s no second or third tentpole to catch the month if the web-slinger somehow disappoints. But everything we’re seeing — record presales, the biggest opening forecast of the year — says that’s the last thing anyone should worry about. August belongs to Spider-Man; everything else is just keeping the lights on between his weekends.