Gower Street Analytics has lifted its 2026 global box office forecast to $35.7 billion, a 2.9% increase from the estimate it presented at CinemaCon in April. If the year lands there, the total would be 6.3% ahead of 2025 and the strongest annual result since 2019’s $42.3 billion. The projection is built on Rentrak actuals and Gower estimates.
The regional split
The headline number hides three very different markets.
- North America: projected at $10.5 billion, up about 18% over 2025.
- International excluding China: projected at $19.7 billion, up nearly 14%.
- China: projected at $5.5 billion, down about 26%.
What is carrying the year
Five titles have crossed the billion-dollar mark globally, led by Sony/Marvel’s Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $2.5B, with The Odyssey at $1.8B and three more joining the billion-dollar club. Lower-cost horror is also over-delivering: Obsession reached $525M and Backrooms $400.6M.
China has its own hits. Pegasus 3 raced to roughly $654M, while Kung Fu Soccer and Once Upon a Time in the Middle East passed $349M and $356M respectively. Yet admissions and ticket prices have softened, and the market is the main reason the global number is not higher.
Summer already showed the pattern
North America recorded an all-time summer high of $4.76B, while global summer grosses hit $14.5B, the best since 2019’s $14.9B. That momentum supports the raised full-year forecast.
What this means for planners
For media planners and distribution teams, the forecast is a reminder to work with separate models rather than one global average. The remaining slate is franchise-heavy: Dune: Part Three, Avengers: Doomsday, The Hunger Games: Sunrise on the Reaping, Godzilla Minus Zero, The Cat in the Hat, Focker-in-Law, Hexed and Jumanji: Open World. These titles should keep North America and much of the international footprint healthy, but they are not a guarantee of a China rebound.
Horror’s over-performance also matters. Tightly budgeted genre titles are generating outsized returns, a useful signal for acquisition and marketing investment.
Do not extrapolate one region’s strength to the entire slate. Do stress-test budgets that assume China returns to its pre-2020 scale this year.
Source: Deadline
