Box office July 2026 predictions: Spider-Man, Nolan's Odyssey, and the film tipped to win the month
July 2026 may be the most stacked box-office month in years: a live-action Disney remake, an Evil Dead sequel, a Christopher Nolan epic built for IMAX, and the return of Spider-Man — all inside four weeks. Here's how the month is shaping up as of early July, and which film forecasters expect to win it.
The July calendar
- Moana (July 10) — Disney 's live-action remake, with Dwayne Johnson back as Maui and Catherine Laga'aia as Moana. Tracking has softened after Toy Story 5 and Minions & Monsters drained the family market, but it 's the last big family tentpole of the summer.
- Evil Dead Burn (July 10) — horror counter-programming in roughly 3,000 theaters, aimed at everyone not going to Moana.
- The Odyssey ( July 17) — Nolan's Homer adaptation, with Matt Damon as Odysseus alongside Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Anne Hathaway. Studio-adjacent tracking puts the opening at $80–100 million; independent forecasts average closer to $118 million.
- Spider- Man: Brand New Day ( July 31) — Tom Holland's fourth solo outing, directed by Destin Daniel Cretton. Long-range tracking sits between $212 million and $255 million for opening weekend, with $228 million the midpoint.
The film tipped to win: Spider-Man
Even with only one July weekend, Brand New Day is the forecasters' pick. A $228 million start would make it just the seventh MCU film ever to open above $200 million, slotting between No Way Home's $260 million and Deadpool & Wolverine 's $211 million.
The demand signals back it up: the strongest first-day US presales of any film in five years — a record No Way Home itself previously held — with domestic presales already past $40 million, and Fandango's biggest first-day pre-sale of 2026.
Prediction markets currently give it a 54.5% chance of finishing as the year's top domestic earner.
One $228 million weekend would likely out-gross what any other release earns across the entire month.
Don't count out Nolan
The Odyssey has history on its side — July gave Nolan The Dark Knight, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer. No non-Batman Nolan film has ever opened above $100 million, but Oppenheimer was tracking at $40–50 million before it exploded to $82.4 million, and Universal is running the same playbook: IMAX- dominated presales, early social reactions from July 6, full reviews on July 15.
If the reviews land the way Oppenheimer's did, that $118 million forecast is a floor, not a ceiling. The film has weathered waves of trailer rating-bombing; presales suggest audiences aren't listening.
The strangest subplot of the month: both heavyweights star the same man. Holland plays Telemachus in The Odyssey two weeks before he puts the suit back on.
"The Odyssey almost saved Spider-Man," Holland told GQ in June 2026 — the six-month delay to film Nolan's epic is what freed Cretton to direct Brand New Day.
For the record: whichever film takes July, Tom Holland wins twice.