The Boxoffice Podium
Forecasting the Top 3 Movies at the Domestic Box Office | July 17 – 19, 2026
Week 29 | July 17 – 19, 2026
1. The Odyssey
Universal | NEW
Opening Weekend Range: $90M – $105M
Showtime Market Share: 23%
Pros
- Oppenheimer‘s Oscar-winning director Christopher Nolan returns with his most ambitious work to date, a mega-budget adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey. With Matt Damon in the lead and enough stars to fill a vellum scroll (Tom Holland, Anne Hathaway, Robert Pattinson, et al.), the movie is also being sold on the extensive practical execution of its heroic-fantasy storytelling. That global canvas makes this a summer event with the potential to eclipse 2023’s Oppenheimer, which opened to $82.45M, a figure that should be considered the floor for The Odyssey. It will not top The Dark Knight‘s $158.4M or The Dark Knight Rises‘ $160.88M bow (tough acts to follow), but will be nonetheless extraordinary for an R-rated prestige literary adaptation. It will easily rank as Matt Damon’s biggest leading-man opening after The Bourne Ultimatum‘s $69.3M (he had supporting roles in Nolan’s Interstellar and Oppenheimer). Critical consensus on Rotten Tomatoes stands at a current 99%, which should help word of mouth and expand the film’s strong run in the ensuing weeks.
Cons
- Despite a rough start to the July box office, we are targeting a $100M domestic debut for The Odyssey. Demand is currently concentrated around premium formats in general, and IMAX venues specifically. It should perform exceptionally well across the approximately 450 IMAX screens in the North American market, with the toughest ticket coming from one of the 33 IMAX 70mm venues (24 US, 9 Canada) where the film is playing, as The Odyssey is the first film to be entirely shot in IMAX 70mm. We expect IMAX demand to extend this title’s earning potential into mid-August, while other premiums should perform dependably up to Spider-Man: Brand New Day‘s debut in late July. Whether the film can break through the PLF bubble and reach the $100M opening-weekend benchmark depends on its appeal in standard auditoriums, where current demand is significantly behind PLF sell-outs. If The Odyssey overperforms on standard screens this weekend, we could easily see this film exceed our opening weekend range.
2. Moana
Disney | Week 2
Weekend Range: $17M – $22M
Showtime Market Share: 15%
Pros
- Disney’s live-action Moana opened close to our $45M baseline forecast for the title, an underwhelming result in itself, though it did manage to earn more praise and money than 2025’s Snow White remake. The live-action Snow White opened to $42.2M vs Moana’s $43.1M, along with the “B+” CinemaScore vs the “A-” of Moana. Overall, though, Disney’s business trifecta of Star Wars, Marvel, and live-action remakes is showing increasing wear and tear despite the occasional win (Deadpool, Lilo & Stitch, etc.). Pixar remains their (mostly) dependable silo for established franchises.
Cons
- After an underwhelming opening weekend of $43.1M, slightly below our $45M forecast, we expect Moana to struggle against the wake from The Odyssey and Spider-Man later this month. The debut landed between 2019 live-action Disney duds like Dumbo and Maleficent: Mistress of Evil. Dumbo opened to $45.9M and posted an $18.2M sophomore frame, while the Maleficent sequel debuted at $36.9M and held on to $19.3M in its second weekend. Neither of those two titles were summer releases, however, so we expect the sophomore frame from Moana to land between $17 – $22m this weekend. At this point, we expect the film to finish its domestic run somewhere between $110 m and $120m, which would fall short of the $139.7m three-day domestic debut of Moana 2 in 2024.
3. Toy Story 5
Disney | Week 5
Weekend Range: $10M – $15M
Showtime Market Share: 11%
Pros
- After flirting with overtaking Minions & Monsters for the last couple of weeks—falling short by $2M last week and $7M the week prior—we expect Toy Story 5 to close the gap and pull ahead this weekend. At $406M domestic and counting, the sequel has emerged as the clear winner in audience demand from all family movies currently in release, and may yet conquer the summer altogether. With $885M in global ticket sales, it will join the coveted $1B club either this week or next.
Cons
- The new installment is still pacing ahead of Toy Story 4 ($346.65M) and will surpass the lifetime of Toy Story 3 ($415M) this week. While other major studio franchise entries have struggled at the summer box office, there aren’t enough think pieces about why Toy Story 5 succeeded. A big part of that is consistency (same look, cast), but more importantly, it is a commitment to quality at Pixar that had them take seven years between this and the previous sequel, and a nine-year gap before that. Letting franchises rest and giving creatives the space to fine-tune storytelling is becoming a lost art, and studios are paying the price for strip-mining IP, including DC (seven releases since 2023, plus streaming product) and even Star Wars, which may have been absent from theaters since 2019 but made itself very available on streaming.
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