Summer box office crosses $2.1 billion and puts 2026 on pace for a $10 billion year

Hollywood spent the weekend watching a new superhero, and the number that actually mattered came off the season ledger. With Toy Story 5 holding the top spot for a second straight weekend, the domestic summer box office pushed past $2.1 billion, running about 17% ahead of where it sat at this point last year. The bigger figure behind it: the annual total is now tracking toward $10 billion, a line the business has not crossed in seven years.

That is the headline this weekend, more than any one opening. The season is deep, and it is holding.

Toy Story 5 is doing the heavy lifting

Pixar's fifth toy outing took another $70 million in its second weekend, a drop of 56% that lands right on top of Incredibles 2's hold at the same stage. Holds like that are how you tell a real hit from a fast start. The film is at roughly $297 million domestic and $585 million worldwide after twelve days, off a franchise-record $160 million opening, with a 93% critics' score and an A CinemaScore doing the word-of-mouth work. It is going to be one of the year's biggest movies, and it is not close to done.

The holdovers are carrying the season

A single blockbuster does not move a season total by 17%. The weekend leaned on a stack of holdovers that keep showing up: Obsession, Michael, the March release Project Hail Mary, and The Odyssey all hanging around the chart week after week. CNBC pegged the annual domestic pace at $10 billion for the first time since 2019 on exactly that strength, the deep middle of the schedule instead of one or two giants. Analysts now see the summer corridor, the first weekend of May through Labor Day, landing somewhere around $4.2 billion.

Supergirl came down to earth

The weekend's marquee debut did not cooperate with the good news. Supergirl opened to $38 million domestic from about 3,600 theaters, plus $68 million worldwide, against a pre-weekend read closer to $50 million. Saturday fell 41% from Friday, and the B- CinemaScore (Superman pulled an A- last year) points to audiences who showed up curious and left lukewarm. On a reported $170 million budget, that is a soft landing for the DCU's second swing, and at least one trade already called it DC Studios' first outright box office flop.

Jackass: Best and Last, meanwhile, opened to roughly $8 million, the smallest start the franchise has ever had. Both new wide releases came in under their numbers. The point worth sitting with: the weekend total held up anyway, because the films already in theaters refused to fall off.

The math is the story

None of this is guaranteed to hold. A flat August or two big misses can wipe out a 17% lead in a few weekends, and the back half of the summer schedule still has to deliver. But a $10 billion year is a number the industry has been chasing since theaters reopened, and for the first time in a while the pace says it is reachable. A disappointing superhero opening barely dented it. That tells you more about the shape of 2026 than the Supergirl headlines do.