No pressure, but Hollywood has a lot riding on summer movie season. The busy stretch from May to August is crucial for the industry, representing 40% of the annual box office. But consumer tastes have been rapidly shifting since the pandemic, so this year’s slate should reveal a great deal about what audiences will (or won’t) pay to watch on the big screen. Studios missed the mark in 2025 as comic book adventures and long-in-the-tooth sequels like “Thunderbolts,” “Fantastic Four: First Steps” and “Mission: Impossible – The Final Reckoning” failed to live up to expectations, causing popcorn season to once again fall short of the hoped-for $4 billion mark again. This summer’s hits and misses could have an outsize influence on Hollywood’s future spending habits.
As theater owners get ready for blockbuster hopefuls like Pixar’s “Toy Story 5,” Christopher Nolan’s “The Odyssey” and Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day,” Variety raises five questions looming over the business.
Milly Alcock as Supergirl
©Warner Bros/Courtesy Everett Collection
1) Will the next four months be a litmus test for superheroes?
Superhero movies, once a Teflon genre, have become worryingly earthbound at the box office. So studios are desperate to know: Do audiences want more of the same, or are they willing to embrace a new generation of heroes? Sony’s “Spider-Man: Brand New Day” (July 31), a sequel to 2021’s juggernaut “No Way Home,” will easily be among the year’s highest-grossing releases. Warner Bros. and DC’s “Supergirl” (June 26) will therefore be a better test of the health of comic book movies. Last summer’s “Superman,” which rebooted the DC Universe, was promising enough with $618 million globally, but that film was centered on an iconic character. His cousin Kara Zor-El, portrayed by Milly Alcock, is not quite as famous — in this universe or any other. Whether “Supergirl” becomes a hit could determine if Superman’s other relatives get the big-screen treatment, or if future adaptations will focus solely on marquee characters.
Emily Blunt in “Disclosure Day”
Universal Pictures
2) Who will prevail in the (friendly) battle of the popcorn filmmakers?
OK, so there’s not really a showdown between Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” (June 12) and Nolan’s “The Odyssey” (July 17). After all, they’re being released a month apart by the same studio, and neither will impact the other’s success. But summer is filled with sequels, remakes and spinoffs, so it’s notable the season’s two big-budget original offerings come from blue-chip directors. Spielberg hasn’t made a popcorn film in nearly a decade, though he all but invented summer movie season in 1975 with “Jaws.” Meanwhile, Nolan cemented his status as this century’s biggest directing draw after “Oppenheimer” grossed nearly $1 billion in 2023. At a time of constant complaints that Hollywood is out of new ideas, maybe the masters can show ’em how it’s done.
Dwayne Johnson rocks curly locks in the live-action “Moana”
Disney
3) Will “Moana” be the next “Lilo & Stitch” or ‘Snow White”?
Disney has gone back to the well to wildly different results. Live-action remakes of “Lilo & Stitch” and “The Lion King” were billion-dollar smashes, while “Snow White” and “Dumbo” were total duds. Part of Disney’s success (or failure) has been reviving the right property at the right time. “Lilo & Stitch,” which debuted in 2002, hit the nostalgia sweet spot; “Snow White,” a nearly 90-year-old property, was (among other issues) much too outdated. Could “Moana” (July 10) be too contemporary? The original oceanic adventure was released only a decade ago, and the second movie swam into theaters in November 2024. (The proximity of the sequel to the remake wasn’t intentional; “Moana 2” was supposed to land on Disney+ but was retooled into a full-length feature.) Will infectiously catchy tunes mobilize the masses for shot-for-shot remake? After all, families can readily watch the animated version at home.
Baby Yoda returns in “The Mandalorian and Grogu“
LUCASFILM LTD”
4) Has “Star Wars” become a small-screen property?
“The Mandalorian and Grogu” (May 22) arrives a seemingly eternal seven years after the last “Star Wars” movie, 2019’s “Rise of Skywalker.” In that span, Lucasfilm has struggled to get a theatrical release off the ground. Meanwhile the company has turned its attention to Disney+ for “The Book of Boba Fett,” “Ahsoka” and “Andor.” This space odyssey spinoff has another challenge — it’s the continuation of a TV show that ran for three seasons. Director Jon Favreau has tricky terrain to navigate: Catering to fans of the streaming series while appealing to people who have never watched the adventures of the masked bounty hunter and a green creature known colloquially as Baby Yoda. “The Mandalorian and Grogu” could hint at whether “Star Wars” remains a cinematic franchise, or if it’s one that audiences would prefer to watch from the couch.
Olivia Wilde and Seth Rogen play an uptight married couple in “The Invite”
Courtesy of Sundance Film Festival
5) Is there room for an indie breakout?
Plenty of titles are hoping to serve as counterprogramming against all the tentpoles. Among them: Olivia Wilde’s comedy “The Invite,” which earned raves and sparked a bidding war at Sundance; “Tony,” a look at the rise of celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain; “Leviticus,” a buzzy horror film about conversion therapy; and “Backrooms,” a creepy sci-fi thriller for the YouTube generation. The reality, though, is success in the art-house space has been sparse since COVID. Recent wins include April’s “The Drama” ($122 million), last year’s “Marty Supreme” ($191 million) and “Materialists” ($107 million). Those films succeeded not just because they boasted big stars like Zendaya, Timothée Chalamet and Pedro Pascal, but also because they sparked online chatter and became part of the cultural conversation. Here’s hoping that A24, Neon and other indies can hit the zeitgeist again.
