2026 Box Office: Once Again, Scott Mendelson Foolishly Predicts the Top Movie For Each of the Next 12 Months

Can the Marvel Cinematic Universe rise again? Will Margot Robbie (again) score the year's least surprising surprise hit? Can Amazon MGM Studios become the next 20th Century Fox? All that, and more!

As has been my tradition since 2015, I am starting the new year (nearly a week late this time, alas) by predicting the year’s biggest box office earners. As is also tradition, this will be itemized into the likely biggest earners for each month. This is primarily so that I can A) look at the overall year and B) not just load up on releases from late-April through late-July and then the year-end biggie(s). And this will only include Hollywood titles. Preemptive obvious apologies to Teng Shen’s third Pegasus flick, titled Fei Chi Ren Sheng 3, opening in China on February 17. However, fun question… does the proverbial next anime biggie count? If we were (retroactively) counting Crunchyroll and Sony’s Demon Slayer: Infinity Castle ($721 million worldwide), would we count when it debuted in its home country (July) or when it debuted in North America (September)? Okay, so I could play these speculative “What if?” games all day. But, without further ado...