Minions, Moana and Myths

Illumination does what Illumination does: drops a Minions movie into the July 4 corridor and prints money. Tracking has Minions & Monsters at $75–85M three-day, $95–115M five-day. Like always, these movies are cheap for animations at a reported $85M budget, even cheaper than The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s $110M, meaning it only needs ~$275M worldwide to profit and should clear that on domestic alone. The main thing to look out for here is how it can hold up against the franchise, which has been remarkably consistent over the years. Minions: The Rise of Gru, the original Minions, Despicable Me 2, and Despicable Me 4 all ended up between $330M and $370M. Despicable Me 3 saw a dip compared to the rest of the franchise and ended up at $265M, which is probably the floor this time around, but the aim should be for another $300M+ domestic grosser here to get this month off to a good start. We’ll see if it can get there or if franchise fatigue will start to take its toll — but it’s better not to bet against these guys.

The most on-the-nose Fourth-of-July counter-programming imaginable — a young-George-Washington origin story. Angel’s grassroots playbook gives Young Washington a floor of about $10–15M total, but we’ll have to see whether it can strike a chord and go beyond that like some of their other films have.

Disney’s best brand to try the remake route with — the original Moana was the most-streamed movie on the planet for two straight years. Dwayne Johnson returns as Maui, newcomer Catherine Laga’aia plays Moana, Thomas Kail directs. So far presales have been soft, although that’s not unexpected this far out for this type of movie. We’ll need to start seeing it pick up in the next two weeks though, and it’ll need to hope for good reviews now that the Disney live-action remakes aren’t a sure-thing anymore (Snow White, anyone?). As long as this clears $200M there’s no cause for concern, though it does have the potential to get over $300M. Last year’s How to Train Your Dragon live-action ($84.6M) might actually end up as a pretty good comp here — that one finaled at $263M domestic. If it can get there or above, we’d count that as a win. Anything under $200M is a cause for concern.

This is the biggest open question of the month. The Odyssey is Christopher Nolan’s first since Oppenheimer ($82M open, $330M domestic, $975M worldwide), the first feature ever shot entirely on IMAX film cameras, a $250M budget, and a cast that reads like a who’s-who of Hollywood — Matt Damon as Odysseus, Anne Hathaway as Penelope, plus Tom Holland, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Charlize Theron, and Lupita Nyong’o. The early 70mm IMAX showings sold out in twelve hours a year ago, and when the rest went on sale recently, the same thing happened again. It feels like a slam dunk on paper, but the online chatter has been a little more mixed than expected — mostly centering around some of the casting choices and the latest trailer not being as strong as the earlier ones. Presales and tracking are definitely strong, but show general-audience interest is potentially a little softer than we’d like to see. If it can earn great reviews and early reactions, that could all neutralize, of course. If it ends up more mixed, that’s when we could see this one slip. If that happens, the worst case is about $175M domestic, carried on the strength of the Nolan brand. Best case is it plays like Oppenheimer and it’s a $300M+ domestic blockbuster with worldwide approaching $1B. July needs this one to hit on the higher end of that range, and right now, we’d say that is the more likely scenario — but it is more review-dependent than the other biggies this month.

Horror’s been one of the best stories of the 2026 summer (Backrooms smashed the A24 record at $81.5M). The sixth Evil Dead, a standalone sequel directed by Sébastien Vanicèk with Sam Raimi producing. The number to beat is Evil Dead Rise’s $24.5M open / $147.1M worldwide; we have Burn opening mid-$20Ms toward $80–100M domestic. On a sub-$25M budget that’s a tidy win and a reliable back-half counter to the four-quadrant tentpoles. Count this one as nice padding for the month, but not make or break.

The biggest movie of the summer opens on the very last day of July and is expected to be absolutely massive. But for July’s ledger it barely matters — a Friday July 31 open means just the first day counts toward the month (although that could easily be $70–90M+ here). The fireworks for this one are an August story — we’ll discuss it more in the next long-range preview.