Movie theaters are having their best year since COVID-19 emptied them out, and two wildly different hits deserve much of the credit, per Variety.
“Without a doubt, we have turned a corner, but I also don’t believe we can just look backwards and try to replicate what we were before COVID,” said Courtenay Valenti, head of film, streaming and theatrical at Amazon MGM Studios.
As of last week, the 2026 domestic box office stood at $4.66 billion, 21% ahead of last year’s pace, putting Hollywood on track for its first $10 billion-plus year since before the pandemic. The surge isn’t riding on one blockbuster, either — it’s a packed, varied slate of movies pulling people back through the doors.
Movieguide® saw this coming. Back in 2024, we reported on a PwC forecast predicting the industry wouldn’t climb back to pre-pandemic revenue until 2026, and that prediction is now playing out almost exactly on schedule.
PROJECT HAIL MARY deserves a lot of that credit. The Ryan Gosling-led space epic logged the year’s biggest opening weekend at $140.9 million worldwide and has since climbed to $683 million globally, becoming Amazon MGM’s first certified theatrical smash.
Movieguide®’s review of the movie praised its “very strong Christian, morally uplifting worldview,” built around themes of faith, hope and sacrificial love, though it cautioned parents about intense scenes of peril for younger kids. We weren’t shocked by any of this, either; Movieguide® noted early on that a hopeful, well-told story about sacrifice was always going to find an audience starved for exactly that.
Then there’s OBSESSION, the horror thriller that cost a mere $750,000 to make and has already pulled in more than $426 million worldwide, making it Focus Features’ highest-grossing release ever. Its director, 26-year-old newcomer Curry Barker, shot the whole thing in 20 days on a budget smaller than a single visual-effects shot in most studio tentpoles.
Movieguide®’s take was considerably less enthusiastic, calling the -4 OBSESSION a “fairly predictable morality tale about the dangers of the occult” that nonetheless “ends on a depressing and hopeless tragic note,” loaded with extreme violence, strong sexual content and heavy profanity.
That contrast is worth sitting with. Audiences are clearly hungry to gather in a dark theater and share a story again, but what studios put on the screen still swings wildly between the redemptive and the reckless. A packed house doesn’t make discernment any less necessary — if anything, it makes it more so.
Younger moviegoers are leading the return. Eighty-seven percent of Gen Zers and 82% of millennials have seen at least one movie in a theater over the past year, numbers that would have looked unthinkable five years ago.
Exhibitors are betting the comeback sticks. AMC Theatres has teamed up with Arena One for concert films, and Regal has added IMAX screens and recliners to its remodeled locations, all part of a broader wager that people will keep choosing the big screen over the couch.
Wide releases are climbing too, with 115 to 120 expected this year, nearly matching 2019’s pre-pandemic total and a sharp jump from the 94 Hollywood managed in 2024. The seats are filling back up. What families still need is a discerning guide for what’s actually worth watching once they get there.
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