Hollywood is having its best summer since before the pandemic, and that hot streak is putting the annual box office on pace to cross $10 billion for the first time in seven years.

The season, which runs from the first weekend in May through Labor Day, has tallied $1.8 billion so far through Sunday. That’s down less than 2% from 2019 levels, or just about a $30 million lag. Industry analysts keep a close eye on this period of the year because it typically accounts for about 40% of the total annual domestic box office.

“The summer box office is incredibly important,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at movie data company Rentrak. “It’s vitally important in terms of what the overall health of the industry looks like and what that portends for the entire year.”

What sets this summer apart is that it didn’t kick off with a blockbuster action film or superhero team-up. Instead, the first major hit of the season came with the release of Disney’s “The Devil Wears Prada 2,” followed by Universal’s “Obsession” and A24’s “Backrooms,” two low-budget horror films from YouTube creators-turned-filmmakers. 

It was further fueled by residual ticket sales of Lionsgate’s “Michael,” the Michael Jackson biopic, which debuted in late April.

Together, those four films have contributed nearly $850 million to the domestic summer box office since the start of May, according to data from Rentrak. Notably, that’s about how much Disney and Marvel’s “Avengers: Endgame” had tallied for the 2019 box office during the same period. 

Last week’s release of Disney and Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” delivered another boost, posting a franchise-best opening of $160 million.

Combined, the handful of upside surprises is making for a stronger-than-expected domestic box office and a promising foundation for the second half of the year as the industry chases pre-pandemic levels.

As of Sunday, the 2026 box office has tallied $4.4 billion domestically, about 15% behind the $5.2 billion the 2019 box office had collected during the same time period.

Contributing to the surprisingly strong ticket sales is movies like “Michael,” “Obsession” and even Amazon MGM’s “Project Hail Mary,” which was released in March, that are holding strong at the box office week after week.

Typically, after opening weekend, a title will see sales drop anywhere from 50% to 70%. But these films were seeing drops of between 20% to 40% each week.

“Obsession” has pulled off an even rarer box office feat as ticket sales actually increased in its second and third weekend in theaters, up 39% and 14%, respectively, according to data from The Numbers.

That success is a sign that films are getting solid word of mouth from audiences and that it’s driving new moviegoers to cinemas.

“It’s just been one after another after another,” said Alex DelVecchio, general manager of Rutgers Cinema in Piscataway, New Jersey. “I always said this whole year was about…

When the holiday season rolled around last year, Margaret Hecox knew exactly what her grandmother would love.

The 23-year-old wrote in a card about “Heated Rivalry,” the breakout Canadian TV series following a clandestine love story between two male hockey players. Hecox watched several episodes with her grandmother and also encouraged friends and other family members to tune in.

“I knew she would like the show,” Hecox said. “Obviously, she did.”

The grandmother-granddaughter duo is part of a sizable fan base of women for books, shows and movies centered on love stories between two men.

This type of romance content — long referred to in some Asian cultures as “yaoi” or “boy love” — has been produced for decades. But consumers and experts told CNBC that the buzz around “Heated Rivalry” pushed this corner of LGBTQ+ media further into the mainstream, particularly among straight American women.

On TikTok, more than 900,000 videos have been posted using the hashtag “fujoshi,” a slang term in Japanese for the female fans of these stories. Google searches for terms related to the yaoi fandom surged to never-seen-before levels late last year in the U.S., underscoring the subgenre’s growing domestic awareness.

“This is all, pun intended, women coming out of the closet with a genre that they have been invested in,” said Shampaigne Graves, who consults on and hosts a podcast about women consumers. “It’s not a new phenomena. It’s just something that women feel comfortable talking about and sharing with one another.”

All the things she said

HBO, the U.S. streaming platform for “Heated Rivalry,” said about two-thirds of the series’ viewership was women. During the show’s press tour, the creative team and lead actors repeatedly fielded questions about why they believed it struck a chord with women in particular.

“‘Heated Rivalry’ sparked straight woman being like ‘OK, we want more of this,'” said Emily Sarre, a social media content creator who made several posts declaring her affinity for the show.

Demand for this type of content has ballooned beyond the six-episode “Heated Rivalry” series.

“Call Me By Your Name,” a coming-of-age drama from Sony, had the ninth most fans of any narrative feature film who identify as women on movie review platform Letterboxd. That’s 46 slots higher than where it sits on the equivalent list for men.

Nearly seven out of 10 viewers of the Timothée Chalamet-led film in the first three months of 2026 were women, according to Nielsen.

“Red, White & Royal Blue,” a 2023 political romcom on Amazon, had 61% female viewers, Nielsen found.

Lionsgate shared Nielsen data with CNBC showing that women accounted for 60% of viewers since the start of last year for “The Perks of Being A Wallflower,” a chronicle of same-sex romance involving a football…

Disney’s Toy Story franchise still has some buzz.

The fifth installment in the Pixar film series tallied $160 million during its opening weekend, the highest in franchise history. Internationally, “Toy Story 5” snared $152 million, bringing its estimated global haul for the three-day period to $312 million.

“Toy Story 4” was the previous record holder for the franchise, generating $120.9 million at its opening in 2019, according to Rentrak data. In total, the film series has collected more than $3 billion at the global box office since the first film debuted in 1995, with two of its installments surpassing $1 billion each worldwide.

“Toy Story 5” had the second-highest opening for an animated feature, just behind “Incredibles 2,” which secured $182.7 million domestically in 2018.

Around 11.5 million moviegoers headed out to see “Toy Story 5” during Father’s Day weekend, according to data from EntTelligence. And more than a fourth of audiences opted for pricier premium large-format screenings. IMAX reported $11.5 million in domestic ticket sales and $18.4 million globally.

“Toy Story 5” continues the trend of strong theatrical showings for family-friendly titles, as nearly 70% of ticket buyers were part of family groups.

“Another incredible summer weekend is on the books as powered by the massive debut of ‘Toy Story 5,’ a movie that had appeal across every imaginable audience demographic and thus became the ultimate four-quadrant movie,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of marketplace trends at Rentrak.

In the last two years, family-friendly fare with a PG rating has won at the box office, outperforming PG-13 and R-rated films, Rentrak data shows.

Additionally, animated features are not usually front-loaded at the box office, meaning they steadily generate ticket sales over the course of their run in theaters, gaining word of mouth.

“Disney and Pixar orchestrated a perfectly timed, flawlessly marketed film that charmed audiences and critics alike that is now set up for weeks of solid playability in movie theaters as it powers toward $1 billion and beyond at the worldwide box office,” Dergarabedian said.

Walt Disney’s “The Mandalorian and Grogu” jettisoned into theaters Friday, marking the first time in seven years that a new Star Wars film has launched on the big screen.

Sunday estimates indicated that the film, based on the hit Disney+ show “The Mandalorian,” surpassed initial box office projections, tallying $82 million in domestic ticket sales through its first three days in theaters. Official numbers will be released on Monday.

While “The Mandalorian and Grogu” outpaced the $80 million that most box office analysts predicted, it has so far tallied less than 2018’s “Solo: A Star Wars Story,” which at $84 million was the previous lowest-opening Star Wars project in the era of Disney Star Wars releases, according to data from Comscore.

Analysts foresee the film exceeding $100 million domestically for the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend. Internationally, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” snapped up around $63 million in ticket sales.

The film benefited from premium large format screenings like IMAX and Dolby Cinema, as 41% of tickets were sold for these upgraded, more expensive showings, according to data from EntTelligence. Standard tickets for the film averaged $16.01 apiece, while premium tickets cost an average of $19.43 each, the data company reported.

However, the film’s box office isn’t the only metric that Disney will be keeping an eye on. The company’s strategy doesn’t just rely on ticket sales — it has other avenues for revenue growth, including merchandise, its streaming service and theme parks.

Star Wars generates more than $1 billion in retail sales each year, even without a new title arriving in theaters.

Additionally, “The Mandalorian” series is the most-watched original show on Disney+, with more than 1.3 billion hours watched globally. Viewership of the series and other Star Wars titles have gotten a bump on the platform in recent weeks because of the release of “The Mandalorian and Grogu.”

At its domestic theme parks, the company updated its “Millennium Falcon: Smuggler’s Run” ride to feature a new mission featuring Grogu in the cockpit. At the same time the BDX droids featured in the film have reappeared in Disneyland’s Galaxy’s Edge themed area. Also, through its close partnership with developer Epic Games, Fortnite has introduced new environments, characters, vehicles and purchasable cosmetics for gamers.

“Star Wars” returns to the big screen for the first time in seven years this weekend, riding the contrails of a Mandalorian’s jetpack.

Disney’s “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” tallied $12 million in Thursday night preview sales, the lowest collection of advance tickets in the franchise’s history, according to data from Comscore. “Solo: A Star Wars Story” was the previous low bar, with $14.1 million in preshow tickets back in 2018.

Box office analysts expect the film, based on the hit Disney+ show “The Mandalorian,” to generate around $80 million for its three-day opening weekend and around $95 million for the four-day Memorial Day holiday weekend. Some less conservative experts have estimated the three-day haul could be $95 million and the holiday weekend could draw $115 million.

That would be one of the smallest openings of a Star Wars film in modern cinematic history. “Solo” captured $84.4 million during its opening eight years ago. Since 2015, only “Solo” has opened to less than $100 million domestically, Comscore data shows.

“The Mandalorian and Grogu” will likely benefit from the popularity of the television show, the long Memorial Day weekend and limited competition from new titles, especially on premium large format screens.

It will also act as a stress test for future Star Wars theatrical releases amid a lackluster cinema run for Star Wars and Marvel, the tentpole franchises that helped Disney dominate the global box office in the 2010s. The studio has “Starfighter” arriving in cinemas in 2027 starring Ryan Gosling and directed by Shawn Levy.

New Star Wars titles have been absent from cinemas since 2019’s “The Rise of Skywalker.” The final film in the Skywalker Saga and third film in what has become known as the sequel trilogy generated more than $1 billion, but was widely panned by critics and fans. Disney and its Lucasfilm studio paused theatrical productions in favor of reestablishing the franchise on streaming service Disney+.

“The Mandalorian,” which premiered just a month before “The Rise of Skywalker,” was a runaway hit for the company and inspired a number of live-action Star Wars projects to get a series run instead of a theatrical one. These include “Andor,” “Obi-Wan Kenobi,” “Ahsoka,” “Skeleton Crew,” “The Acolyte” and “The Book of Boba Fett.”

Lucasfilm tapped director Jon Favreau — who worked alongside the newly minted head of the studio, Dave Filoni, to bring “The Mandalorian” to Disney+ — to helm “The Mandalorian and Grogu.” The feature film had a slightly smaller budget than typical Star Wars films, with the cost of production estimated to be around $165 million. Other Star Wars projects released theatrically in the previous decade had production budgets of $250 million or higher, according to data from The Numbers.

This means that “The Mandalorian and Grogu” has a smaller profitability threshold than previous titles from the franchise. Of course, those production…

Wall Street is buzzing following reports that IMAX is exploring a sale.

Shares of the movie theater technology company were up roughly 14% Friday on speculation about potential buyers. A source familiar with the company told CNBC that IMAX has held “preliminary talks” through intermediaries, but no official pitches have been made by the company.

CNBC’s source spoke on the condition of anonymity due to the confidential nature of the discussions. The Wall Street Journal first reported the potential sale process.

While IMAX may not be actively pursuing a sale, CEO Rich Gelfond has left the door open for a possible buyout. In December, he told shareholders during the company’s investor day that IMAX is “an incredibly valuable player, either as a wholly differentiated publicly-traded company or as part of a larger company.”

Wall Street analysts broadly see IMAX as an attractive asset that could draw interest from a variety of businesses, from Hollywood studios and theatrical partners to fellow tech companies. Several analysts wrote that IMAX is currently undervalued.

“IMAX is a rare combination of a globally recognized premium brand, an asset-light licensing model, and a structurally expanding earnings profile,” Wedbush Senior Vice President of Equity Research Alicia Reese wrote in a research note published Friday. “IMAX is trading at a discount to what we believe the business is worth as a standalone entity, let alone as a strategic acquisition target.”

As of midday Friday, IMAX shares were trading at nearly $39 apiece for a market capitalization of roughly $2.1 billion.

“A prospective acquirer would be buying one of the most defensible moats in entertainment for what amounts to a rounding error on the balance sheet of any major studio or technology platform,” Reese wrote.

Reese suggested that IMAX’s most likely suitors would include private equity, Netflix, Apple and Sony.

Private equity would avoid any potential conflict issues, as there would be no competing interest for screens, she noted.

Netflix, meanwhile, does not rely on theatrical releases as part of its main programing strategy, therefore its conflict of interest would be smaller than traditional Hollywood studios. Additionally, owning IMAX would provide any filmmaker that signed on to work with Netflix the opportunity for premium theatrical runs and could act as a “powerful recruiting tool,” according to Reese.

As for Apple and Sony, both companies have strong technology businesses in addition to theatrical and streaming content. Although, Sony does not have its own streaming platform, while Apple has AppleTV.

“We would be surprised if any of the major Hollywood studios pursued an acquisition of IMAX given the competition with other studios for key IMAX release windows (and the likelihood that a studio would…

Paramount CEO David Ellison is trying to do something that no other studio has done in the modern age of cinema — release 30 films annually.

Ellison once again promised this theatrical feat in front of thousands of exhibitors at CinemaCon earlier this month. Applause erupted from the crowd after he made the pronouncement.

But privately, movie theater operators have expressed concerns and skepticism about the proposed future slate of films. While a massive string of releases would help cinemas, companies doubt he will be able to follow through on the promise.

His 30-film plan would hinge on Paramount receiving regulatory approval for its proposed merger with Warner Bros. Discovery, which the latter company’s shareholders approved last week. Ellison noted that each studio would produce 15 films a year.

However, Ellison has not provided many details about those 30 releases, and it’s not clear how he would hit the ambitious goal. Representatives for Paramount did not reply to CNBC’s request for comment.

It’s unclear if all of the films would have wide releases (meaning they eventually play in at least 1,500 theaters, though the typical benchmark is 2,000). It’s also not certain whether the company will count films it distributes but doesn’t produce as part of this figure, or how many of those proposed titles will be considered tentpole blockbusters.

Movie theater operators and industry experts are skeptical that Paramount would be able to sustain a 30-film slate after the initial merger. After all, part of the consolidation process is eliminating redundancies, which inevitably leads to layoffs as well as cost-cutting measures that often result in fewer productions.

“When it comes to traditional brand-new wide release films, 30 movies a year is a lofty plan given that most distributors are releasing on average anywhere from 10 to 15 wide releases each year,” said Paul Dergarabedian, head of market trends at Comscore.

In fact, in the last 25 years, no studio has released 30 films in a single year. The combination of 20th Century Fox and Searchlight came close in 2006 when the studios had 25 wide releases, according to data from Comscore.

The data also show that when studios have merged in the past, the result has been fewer theatrical releases, not more.

Prior to acquiring 21st Century Fox and its studio assets, Disney was averaging 12 films a year dating back to 2000. Meanwhile, the combined efforts of 20th Century Fox and Searchlight averaged 16 films during that same time. Not including 2020, in which theatrical releases were impacted by pandemic-related cinema closures, Disney has averaged around 13 films a year following the 2019 merger.

The line chart shows the annual film releases by Disney and 20th Century between 2000 and 2019…

At a time when Hollywood is torn between fear of artificial intelligence stealing jobs and the pressure to cut costs, a new kind of hybrid production studio is launching with the latest AI tools.

Innovative Dreams is a new production services company, backed by Amazon Web Services and Luma, a generative AI startup, that combines cameras and a giant LED wall on a soundstage with tools to apply AI from pre-production, to shooting, into post-production. By combining virtual production, motion capture, and a variety of AI tools including Luma, Google’s Nano Banana, and Bytedance’s SeeDream, Innovative Dreams says it can significantly cut down both on costs and time.

“We visually design and explore the world, then we take the footage that we filmed and start mapping that performance capture to these digital assets,” CEO Jon Erwin explained. “You’re fusing a performance with a piece of [digital] wardrobe that you like. The cool thing is the actor’s performance, the camera, the lens choice– that’s all getting through.” Erwin says this approach merges a traditional filmmaking process into a digital world, rather than replacing cameras and actors with prompts.

Innovative Dreams was born of Erwin’s production studio, Wonder Project, after he used AI to produce historical scenes in far-flung locales for its biggest show, “House of David.” (The show is available via Amazon Prime Video.) With Innovative Dreams, Erwin is going all-in on the potential for AI and virtual production to create films and shows with massive scale, without ever leaving a sound stage — and he aims to keep production in Southern California.

“It was a game-changer in House of David, so we came back from that experience thinking that other people must have been doing the same thing,” Erwin said. “We quickly realized that people weren’t.” 

The first project using this new workflow is an upcoming three-part series called “The Old Stories: Moses,” starring Ben Kingsley, set to debut this spring. The three-episode series, shot in a single week on the virtual soundstage, shows the actors in 40 locations, by putting footage from around the world into the screens in the production facility. Erwin says it would have taken a traditional production five or six weeks to shoot –and there wouldn’t have been the budget to go to so many locations.

AI video generation requires such massive amounts of computing capacity, Innovative Dreams brought on AWS as an investor and partner; AWS provides cloud and AI infrastructure to power the real-time hybrid production tools used on set, part of its broader effort to work with the entertainment industry.

“We’re providing the … tools that are going to allow for filmmakers to be able to work in ways that they simply couldn’t have been able to before and produce content much faster, much cheaper, and collaborate in ways that…

There’s a love affair on Wall Street between investors and streaming.

The romance started about a decade ago when consumers began cutting the cord with cable TV bundles en masse in favor of direct-to-consumer streaming apps. However, where investors were once enamored with subscriber growth, rewarding companies that were able to expand their consumer reach, their attentions have now shifted toward profitability.

To meet this new expectation, streaming companies have raised the prices of their services, cracked down on password sharing and delved into the ad-supported space. It’s also sparked the likes of Paramount Skydance to seek out the acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery for its extensive library of content and top-tier streaming service, HBO Max, in order to compete.

While streaming continues to drive media stocks, especially around quarterly earnings, it’s not clear when — or if — it will start driving profits for the smaller players.

“Is streaming a good business?” Robert Fishman, senior research analyst at MoffettNathanson, posed in a March research note to investors. “We raised and debated this critical question over the years leading us to determine the answer is yes, albeit only for those services with sufficient scale.”

For legacy media companies, streaming has yet to fully supplant the profits and advertising revenue of linear TV. Of course, both of those metrics have been in decline for companies like WBD, Paramount and its peers.

In response, streamers have largely raised subscription prices for consumers, begging the question of where the ceiling is for streaming costs. Between higher fees and the sheer number of services needed in order to have access to all content, consumers are starting to balk.

Still, with these continuous linear TV declines, investors cling to streaming as a bright spot, especially for companies that have made it profitable. Disney has been among the steadiest of legacy media companies when it comes to a profitable streaming business, but Paramount and WBD have seen profitable quarters and Comcast’s Peacock is narrowing losses.

“With streaming no one’s reporting sub numbers anymore, because now it’s all about profitability,” Doug Creutz, senior research analyst at Cowen, told CNBC. “And that’s the metric by which these these businesses are being judged. It’s, you know, can you get to 10% operating profit? Can you get 15%? Can you get 20%? Can you get 25%? Can you get to where Netflix is?”

Netflix reported operating margin of 29.5% in 2025. Meanwhile, Disney, for example, guided investors to an operating margin for its direct-to-consumer business of 10% in fiscal 2026.

Hollywood has lost one of its most lucrative theatrical markets. It’s unclear if it will ever win it back.

The Chinese box office was once a coveted space for American-made movies, so much so that studios produced films that would appeal directly to this international audience. But in the postpandemic cinema landscape, Hollywood hasn’t generated the strong ticket sales it once saw for its biggest blockbusters — and a waning relationship with Chinese cinemas is at least partly to blame.

The U.S.-China Film Agreement, struck in 2012 between the two governments, guaranteed 34 U.S. films would be released in China each year. That pact ended in 2017 and was never renewed or renegotiated. At the same time, China began expanding its local film production and instituting blackout dates to promote viewership of its homegrown titles. 

Add in strict censorship policies from the China Film Administration and recent political strains between the U.S. and China, and Hollywood films have faced several hurdles just to get distribution in the country post-Covid.

“I think that the kind of euphoria about the world’s largest market and thinking about China as a place that always creates a larger market for U.S. [intellectual property] is not accurate,” said Aynne Kokas, a professor at the University of Virginia and the author of “Hollywood Made in China.”

“[There are] constraints on the market in a couple of ways, first related to content control and not just content control in terms of censorship, but also in terms of control of distribution channels by the party,” Kokas said.

She said the film bureau will “turn on and off the levers of distribution based on the needs of the market.” If local Chinese films are doing well, the country will limit distribution access for foreign films. If there are gaps in film releases or releases aren’t selling as many tickets, it will open up the market.

In 2019, nine U.S. titles each generated more than $100 million at the Chinese box office, with Disney and Marvel Studio’s “Avengers: Endgame” collecting more than $600 million in the region, according to data from Comscore.

In the past five years combined, however, only 10 American films have generated more than $100 million in China, with only two topping $200 million.

The outlier is Disney’s “Zootopia 2,” which tallied a record-breaking $650 million in the country following its 2025 release.

Box office analysts tell CNBC that this feat is likely an anomaly and studios and Wall Street shouldn’t expect a sudden resurgence of ticket sales for American-made fare in the region even as major franchises launch ahead of the key summer movie season.