As well as celebrating their wedding, the actors Tom Holland and Zendaya have something else to toast: their two summer blockbusters – The Odyssey and Spider-Man: Brand New Day – have officially made box office history.
The films were credited as the driving force behind the US’s biggest summer season of all time, taking $4.761bn (£3.51bn) from 1 May-7 September, beating 2013’s $4.756bn.
Spider-Man is currently on $2.4bn worldwide and likely to climb higher, while The Odyssey has made $1.6bn. Other key titles driving sales include Toy Story 5, Michael and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, all of which have grossed over $1bn.
The breadth of the success of Destin Daniel Cretton’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day was a particular surprise. The film is the best-performing of the year so far and the third highest-grossing film of all time. Its opening weekend was the second-best of all time behind Avengers: Endgame (2019) and it is also the second-fastest film to gross $1bn, doing so in six days.
Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey, meanwhile, is the highest-grossing “original” movie of the year, despite its adaptation from Homer’s epic poem. Low-budget original horror movies Backrooms ($394m) and Obsession ($513m) have also helped re-energise the box office.
Sequels and spinoffs accounted for many of the underperformers, including Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu ($345.4m) , Supergirl ($126.4m) and Minions & Monsters ($518.1m – around half of 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru).
Meanwhile, August cinema admissions in the UK rose 56% year-on-year to over 17m, according to the UK Cinema Association, signalling the biggest August since 2018 and the second-best performing month since July 2023, when Barbie and Oppenheimer opened together.
Such an uptick is dwarfed by the picture in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, which saw an 88% year-on-year lift, according to Gower Street and the International Union of Cinemas. France’s 19.9m August admissions was the best number recorded during that month since records began 46 years ago, and marked a 50% increase from 2025.
Italian cinemas recorded their best-ever June-August period, with 20.8m admissions and a take of €162.3m, as well as their best ever August. Spain saw a 71% year-on-year increase, while the Netherlands recorded a 77% lift.
