August is usually a wind-down period for the box office, as the height of summer gives way to the slower business of early autumn. But thanks almost entirely to “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” movie theaters have enjoyed historically strong business for time of year.
Excluding its opening day record $169.8 million on July 31, the Sony/Marvel Studios blockbuster has contributed $685 million to overall domestic grosses this month. That accounts for approximately 62% of all grosses in U.S. and Canada this August, which have reached an all-time monthly record of $1.1 billion through Sunday.
That shatters the previous record of $1.019 billion set back in 2016 and puts this month on pace to double the meager $680 million overall total of August 2025, when the highest grossing film was the mid-budget horror hit “Weapons” with $132.5 million.
This is only the third time that the August box office has cleared $1 billion domestic, and like 2026, the two other times it happened were due in good part to a late summer superhero film. In 2016, the highest grossing August film was the DC title “Suicide Squad” with $286.4 million, and in 2014, the highest grossing film was Marvel Studios’ “Guardians of the Galaxy” with $275 million.
But what separates this August from 2014 and 2016 is how top-heavy it is. Behind “Spider-Man,” the next highest grossing film for this month is Universal’s “The Odyssey” with $180.5 million grossed through Saturday. The next highest film? Warner Bros.’ “The End of Oak Street” with just $38 million.
Combined, “Spider-Man” and “Odyssey” currently combine for 78% of all August business. In 2014, the top two films, “Guardians of the Galaxy” and Michael Bay’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles” combined for 43% of the $1.01 billion grossed that month. In 2016, “Suicide Squad” and “Jason Bourne” combined for 37% of the $1.01 billion grossed.
With “Brand New Day” chasing the all-time domestic gross record of $936 million held by “Star Wars: The Force Awakens” and “The Odyssey” now standing as the highest grossing R-rated film ever, theaters are riding the wave of box office history to the strongest summer they have seen since the COVID-19 pandemic.
But it is also an indication of how changing release strategies by studios and audience moviegoing habits have changed even in the past decade, as fewer mid-budget films hit theaters while the ones that do, like “The End of Oak Street,” have a harder time competing against the buzziest tentpoles even when they get good reviews.
