Summer ends Monday, and it ends with a record on the table. Rentrak had the season at $4.598 billion through Sunday against 2013’s all-time $4.756 billion, which means we may fall just a little short of that record, mostly thanks to no high-profile new release this weekend (though we do have a few smaller ones). Spider-Man: Brand New Day goes for a sixth straight weekend at #1 and crosses $900 million today, By Any Means and Onslaught open into the holiday, and The Odyssey has quietly pulled level on weekdays.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday all landed between -45% and -46% against the same days a week earlier, the same footing that produced the -42% fifth weekend, and Thursday came in at -42% to leave it at $899,762,191. It is $237,809 short of $900 million, so the second film ever to reach that number gets there in the first hour of business today.
With Monday a holiday, expect strong Sunday holds across the board this weekend, which should give Brand New Day a drop slightly under 40%: call it $14 to $16 million. Add in the Monday holiday and we are looking at a total of about $920 million, meaning it will be less than $20 million away from passing The Force Awakens for the all-time domestic crown. Expect that record to fall in two weekends’ time.
Worldwide it is at $2.34 billion and third all-time behind Avatar and Endgame, as it passed Avatar: The Way of Water, Ne Zha 2 and Titanic last week. It has finally slowed down somewhat, so expect it to end up somewhere close to $2.5B when all is said and done.
The Odyssey
The Odyssey re-took first place on Wednesday from Spider-Man: Brand New Day, a sign of just how strongly it is holding up and an indicator that Imax is still full seven weeks in. All week it dropped barely more than 20% against the week before: -26%, -25% and -20% from Monday to Wednesday, off a -27% seventh weekend. This weekend, with the Sunday holiday, expect around a 20% slide, maybe slightly better, to around $11 to $12 million, and it should once again be the shallowest decliner on the board.
It came into the weekend at a little over $570 million, so it should end up close to $585 million after Monday, putting it on pace for a finish comfortably above $600 million. So where does it land? It overtakes The Super Mario Bros. Movie this weekend for 18th all-time domestically, and then next on the list are Incredibles 2 ($608M), Star Wars: The Last Jedi ($620M) and The Avengers ($623M). We expect it to clear all three and ultimately land close to Barbie’s $636M.
Worldwide it stands at $1.56 billion, already Nolan’s biggest, Universal’s second biggest ever, and 14th of all time. Next on that list are the 2019 remake of The Lion King ($1.66B), Jurassic World ($1.67B) and Inside Out 2 ($1.7B), and we expect it to pass all three. It has already been said, but this is a phenomenal performance even against very high expectations. $1 billion would have been very strong, at Oppenheimer levels, so this is going to end up more than 70% over that high bar.
Coyote vs. Acme
We said last week that anything above $15 million is a strong result, and it did exactly that, with great word of mouth on top. That is exactly what it needed for a strong Labor Day hold, hopefully staying basically flat or only slightly down once you add in the Monday holiday.
For the three days it may hit around $9 million, but if it can get up to double digits that is a great result here. At those numbers this one is already at $35 million by Monday, making $50 million a foregone conclusion and making Warner Bros. maybe rethink throwing it away for a tax write-off before selling it on to Ketchup Entertainment.
By Any Means
Hard to judge this one, but the buzz is low and Mark Wahlberg has not been a butts-in-seats movie star for a while now. Still, reviews are decent at 72% and a 56 Metascore, and it is the only new wide release this weekend from a major studio. The Dog Stars opened last weekend to $7.7 million; expect lower than that here unless walk-up buyers push it higher than expected. Call it $3 to $6 million and a quick run before it finds its audience on streaming.
Onslaught
Another hard one to judge, but we do not see this breaking out with the number of other options on the table and the limited buzz attached to it. A24 does have a more dedicated fanbase, so it could open at a similar level to By Any Means, or it could fail to find footing and barely get noticed. Reviews are fine but are not enough to pique attention, currently 62%, which is a little low for the movie fans who show up to specialty titles. If it can get to $5 million or above that is a decent start, though not necessarily what we expect here.
Insidious: Out of the Further
This is probably the last weekend Insidious makes any sort of significant money, but it should still grab another $5 million or so and get up above $50 million domestic and $120 million worldwide. This one has done all the work it needed to already off its cheap $18 million budget. A nice result for Sony, a studio that needs to pad out its slate with more of these mid-sized hits.
Fall 2: Deadpoint
It opened Wednesday to $310,927, a $207 per-screen average. That is… really bad. Lionsgate will have to hope people did not realise it was opening midweek and pray the weekend can still get it to around $4 million. Remember, the original only opened to $2,512,145 on almost exactly the same footprint, 1,548 screens, so this is one of the more surprising sequels in recent memory. You have to assume it did well enough on streaming to justify it. Lionsgate has not disclosed a budget and The Numbers carries no production figure for it, but we are assuming it was cheap to make and will find more life once it hits streaming.
Down the chart
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie takes $3 to $4 million in week four with the holiday Monday behind it, on the way to $50M+ total. The End of Oak Street does $2.5 to $3.5 million and finishes around $57 million. Buddy is the one worth watching: $5.5 million on 1,277 screens was the biggest Roadside Attractions opening since Covid, it holds an 88% Tomatometer, and $3 to $4 million this weekend turns it into a genuinely profitable specialty play. The Dog Stars slides to $3 to $4 million, barely hitting $20 million when all is said and done, far from its $110 million negative cost. Disney also puts Cars back out for its twentieth anniversary; it did $244 million domestic in 2006 and will do low single-digit millions here this weekend.
Looking ahead
Practical Magic 2 opens September 11 and is the film that finally takes a weekend off Brand New Day after six of them. All signs are pointing to at least $35 million with a good shot at $40M+. A week after that Resident Evil arrives, and we are seeing that at $35M+ too, so just as Spider-Man and The Odyssey get ready to drop into single-digit weekends, two new breakouts are ready to keep September propped up.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day took a sixth straight weekend at #1 with $18 million and a -20% drop, the shallowest of its entire run, and pushed to $917.8 million domestic. It is now $18.9 million from the all-time record. Behind it The Odyssey fell just 9%, crossed $1 billion internationally and passed The Super Mario Bros. Movie for 18th all-time, and summer 2026 spent the weekend taking the all-time record away from 2013, a deserving result for a Summer that has had at least 3 truly historic box office runs, all alongside a healthy and diverse overall slate. For more on that, check out our Summer 2026 recap for a comprehensive look at the biggest hits and flops. For now, let’s look at this Labor Day holiday weekend and how things shook out.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Being a holiday weekend, this was always going to be Spider-Man’s best drop so far, but -20% is genuinely much better than we expected here (we had it in the 30’s). With $18M, it closed Sunday at $917,762,495. Add in holiday Monday and this will be less than $15M from taking the all-time domestic record from The Force Awakens, that’s a record that has held for 11 years, so this is a big one. Of course, 11 years of price increases/inflation means it hasn’t sold as many tickets as TFA, but this is still a remarkable run, especially amidst a Superhero downturn of sorts, which just proves that Spider-Man is its own entity and by far the most popular character/story in the genre.
Back to the holiday result, we should see around $22 million over the 4-day, which would make this the fourth-best Labor Day holdover ever behind The Sixth Sense ($29.2M), Crazy Rich Asians ($28.5M) and Guardians of the Galaxy ($22.9M). We’re still expecting this one to end up with around $960M domestically, agonisingly close to the never-before-hit $1B domestic mark. Worldwide is closing in on $2.4B as it heads to $2.5B, the third biggest of all-time.
The Odyssey
Unlike Spider-Man, we did expect a hold at this level from The Odyssey, and in fact, it barely dropped at all, down just 9% to $13M, bringing its total up to $585M. The Odyssey is playing in 2,310 theatres, down from 2,600+ last weekend, and what’s remarkable is how strong its theatre average still is 8 weeks into the run. This weekend, there were actually more people in each theatre playing the film than last weekend, $5.6K per theatre compared to $5.5K last weekend. That’s also a better average than anything else playing in the top 20 right now, and it isn’t even really close. The obvious reason for all of this is that IMAX is still firing on all cylinders, routinely still selling out, and Universal is keeping those screens for The Odyssey all the way through September, showing that IMAX is clearly very happy to just keep playing this one all the way through to the fall.
Back to the numbers, it passed The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s $574,934,330 during the weekend to take 18th on the all-time domestic list at $584,777,000. This also makes it Universal’s second-biggest domestic release ever, behind only Jurassic World’s $653.4 million. Next movie to pass: Incredibles 2 at $608.6M, and it could end up very close to Barbie’s $636M total. Overseas, it actually outgrossed Spider-Man thanks to continuously strong holds (it was down about 30%) and crossed $1 billion at the international box office on Friday, now at $1.62B, 14th biggest all-time, with The Lion King (2019), Jurassic World and Inside Out 2 all set to fall to it in the coming week or two, as it shoots for a total of maybe $1.8B or so, which would be 11th of all-time. Remember when the $1.3B R-rated record held by Deadpool & Wolverine felt unbeatable? Welp... The Odyssey is gonna finish almost half a billion above it now.
Coyote vs. Acme
After a great result last weekend, Coyote vs. Acme had exactly the holiday hold it wanted, down a fantastic -29% to $11.3M and $34M after 10 days. We said in the preview article we wanted to see this remain basically flat from last weekend when you add in the Monday holiday gross, and it should get there, expect around $15M or so, putting it close to $40M. This really improves the final prediction for the film, rising from about $50M to now probably upwards of $70M. Considering this movie almost never released at all (Warner shelved it and took a tax write-off for it, before Ketchup Entertainment came to the rescue and bought it for $50M), this is a great result. For context, Ketchup’s previous biggest opening was $3.2 million... and now they’re going to clear $70 million domestic and have all the goodwill for saving this film from never being seen. Hopefully the great word of mouth can keep carrying it through September.
By Any Means
Considering the low profile heading into release, By Any Means opening to $7.4M (and close to $10M including Monday), this is a relative overachievement, if still a modest one, especially when you compare it to the other new releases this weekend... more on that below.
While this opened essentially on par with The Dog Stars from last weekend, the budget here is only $29M (The Dog Stars was reportedly $110M), so this one should pass $25M or so domestically and with overseas and streaming added in, this will find its way to a modest profit.
Cars
Pixar put Cars back into 2,900 theaters for its 20th anniversary and it took $6,100,000, finishing sixth and genuinely overperforming for these Labor Day Pixar re-releases, which usually open much lower at around $2-3M. A 20-year-old film taking six million dollars on a holiday weekend, opening higher than all but one new release, when it’s readily available on Disney+ just shows the enduring strength of the Cars franchise. The weekend pushed the film’s lifetime domestic to $250,182,982.
Insidious: Out of the Further
A great performance here for a horror flick, dropping just 36% (we were seeing it lower heading into the weekend at around 45%). That was enough to get to $55M, and should finish around $65M or so. It’s also doing solid business overseas and has now passed $120 million worldwide. On an $18 million budget, this is a strong, easily profitable result for Sony.
Onslaught
We called $3 to $5 million and said it would either land near By Any Means or fail to find its footing. It failed to find its footing. Onslaught opened to $1,883,584 on 1,918 screens for 12th place, a $982 average that ranks tenth of the thirteen wide releases on the chart, under a fourth weekend of PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie. It is A24’s smallest wide opening of the year, below The Death of Robin Hood’s $2.9M and nowhere near Backrooms, The Drama or Undertone.
The Saturday is the part worth staring at. Onslaught fell 30% from Friday, the worst Friday to Saturday move of those thirteen wide releases and the only one to drop by double digits, on a Labor Day weekend where Toy Story 5 gained 127% and Spider-Man: Brand New Day gained 80%. Sunday ticked up 1%, and that is the holiday doing the work with Monday off. The C CinemaScore and the 61% audience score are saying the same thing the Saturday said. The Death of Robin Hood legged 1.9x off its $2.9M start and that is roughly the shape here, so under $4 million is where this finishes. Worldwide is domestic only for now: Germany opened a day ahead of us and the UK does not go until December.
Two more worth a line. The Dog Stars fell 65% to $2.7 million for $13,037,035 through ten days, a very weak hold that means it won’t even get to $20M... against a $110 million budget. Akira took $2,670,000 in 787 theaters at a $3,393 average, second-best on the entire chart, another great overperformance from a re-release this weekend. Fall 2: Deadpoint was DOA, barely grossing more than the already dismal $2.5M of the first film. We’re still not quite sure what Lionsgate was seeing that made them want to move forward with a sequel here, but whatever it was, it clearly didn’t translate.