The Event Movies of 2026, So Far (Updated Weekly)

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This is the living 2026 ledger, built on the same USA Times Event-Movie Index as our 2024 and 2025 editions: the No. 1 film’s share of the week’s entire U.S. box office, week by week. It updates as each new week closes. Through week 33 (ending Aug 20), 17 films have owned at least one week. The summer rewrote the top of the board: Spider-Man: Brand New Day opened to a record $510 million in a single week — 80.0% of the entire U.S. box office, the highest one-week share anywhere in the USA Times index. The Odyssey (65.1%, two straight Phenomenon weeks) and Toy Story 5 (68.0%) followed. In all, 2026 has produced 5 Phenomenons so far.

Three tiers of event — set by the golden ratio

The event movies of 2026, so far

The profitability column shows worldwide gross ÷ production budget for films whose totals have settled; titles still early in release are marked in release. Note the split verdicts of the summer: Backrooms turned $10 million into nearly $390 million (a 39× return), while Disney’s live-action Moana owned a week yet still sits below break-even at 0.91× — proof that owning a week and making money are two different things.

The most eventful movies of 2026, so far

Peak share tells you how high a film climbed; staying power tells you how long it reigned. Weeks in event status, split by tier:

1. Spider-Man: Brand New Day — 3 weeks in event status (2 as a Phenomenon, 1 as a Major event), peak 80.0%.
2. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie — 3 weeks in event status (1 as a Phenomenon, 2 as a Major event), peak 65.5%.
3. Toy Story 5 — 2 weeks in event status (1 as a Phenomenon, 1 as a Major event), peak 68.0%.
4. The Odyssey — 2 weeks in event status (2 as a Phenomenon), peak 65.1%.
5. Project Hail Mary — 2 weeks in event status (2 as a Major event), peak 58.3%.
6. Hoppers — 2 weeks in event status (1 as a Major event), peak 50.3%.
7. Michael — 1 week in event status (1 as a Phenomenon), peak 66.3%.
8. Scream 7 — 1 week in event status (1 as a Major event), peak 56.7%.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Spider-Man: Brand New Day tie for the year’s longest reign at three event weeks each — but Spider-Man did it from a higher floor, with two Phenomenon weeks to Mario’s one. So far, 11 of the 17 owned exactly one week — the one-week wonders.

Week by week: the 2026 index

Complete through week 33 (ending Aug 20, 2026); later weeks fill in automatically each Monday. Red-shaded = Phenomenon; blue = Major event; gray = no owner; “+” = a second film also cleared 26.18%. Weekly total = that week’s reported U.S. box office. Weeks 1–18, 20, 21 and 24 use USA Times’ original weekly tabulation; weeks 19 and 22–33 use The Numbers’ weekly domestic charts (Friday–Thursday box-office week), adopted after Box Office Mojo’s weekly pages moved to a JavaScript-only format. Shares are directly comparable.

Never four in a week

2026 has produced three two-owner weeks so far — Project Hail Mary and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie overlapped in late March; The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael split a huge May week; and in early July Minions & Monsters edged Toy Story 5 (26.3%) in a rare hand-off week. But as ever: never three, never four. Four films clearing 26.18% would require more than 100% of a single week.

Where the events cluster

Owned weeks are not spread evenly across the calendar. Event-weeks by month in 2026: Jan 1, Feb 1, Mar 5, Apr 4, May 3, Jun 4, Jul 5, Aug 2 (Sep–Dec still to come). They bunch into the summer tent-pole run — July alone produced five straight owned weeks, four of them Phenomenon or Major — exactly the seasonality our 20-year index is built to test.

How we build this

Each week we divide the No. 1 film’s weekly domestic gross by that week’s total domestic box office, and check No. 2 for two-owner weeks. A film is an event movie if its share reaches 26.18% in any week; its tier is set by its peak. This page refreshes weekly.

Sources: The Numbers weekly domestic charts and Box Office Mojo weekly domestic charts (2026); worldwide grosses and production budgets per Box Office Mojo, The Numbers and studio reporting. Method: USA Times Event-Movie Index. See also the USA Times definition of an event movie.