Through September 25, three blockbusters took 26.83% of the U.S.–Canada box office

Three enormous films did not account for most of the U.S.–Canada box office in 2026. That matters whenever a “box-office recovery” is credited to a few hits: through September 25, the leading trio generated slightly more than one dollar in every four, while all other films earning revenue during the period supplied the remaining $5.56 billion.

The market was nevertheless substantially larger in dollar terms. Box Office Mojo’s same-date comparison reports $7.598 billion in domestic calendar grosses from January 1 through September 25. That was 19.3% above the comparable 2025 figure, 24.4% above 2024 and 9% above 2023.

“Domestic” here is the film industry’s combined U.S.–Canada market. The figures are nominal revenue: dollars collected, without an adjustment that would turn them into a count of admissions.

Reproducing the 26.83% figure

Box Office Mojo’s 2026 calendar-gross ranking lists Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $946,182,066, The Odyssey at $612,118,605 and Toy Story 5 at $480,262,576.

Add those three figures, then divide by the market total:

($946,182,066 + $612,118,605 + $480,262,576) ÷ $7,598,043,185 = 26.8301%

Together, the three films earned $2,038,563,247. Subtracting that from the market total leaves $5,559,479,938, or 73.1699%, from all other films earning money in 2026 through September 25.

Expanding the calculation to the ten leading titles produces a different picture. The top ten totaled $4,049,434,391, or about 53.3% of the market. Alongside the leading trio, that group included The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, Michael, Project Hail Mary, Obsession, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Backrooms and Minions Monsters.

That is meaningful concentration: ten films generated just over half the revenue recorded by the chart. But it is not evidence that three releases dominated the entire market, because their combined share remained well below half.

“Everything else” does not mean only new releases

Calendar grosses answer a specific question: how much money did a film earn during the stated year? They do not necessarily group films by the year in which they first opened.

The Numbers explains this distinction and includes money earned in 2026 by films released in 2025. Box Office Mojo’s chart likewise contains holdovers including Avatar: Fire and Ash, Zootopia 2 and The Housemaid.

That is why the $5.56 billion remainder should be described as revenue from all other films earning money during the period—not as revenue exclusively from films released in 2026.

The Numbers is another industry listing, not an independent observed head count. It publishes estimated ticket sales and differs slightly from Box Office Mojo on some grosses: for example, it lists Spider-Man: Brand New Day at $946,582,066, exactly $400,000 higher. The concentration calculation above therefore uses Box Office Mojo consistently for both the individual films and the market total.

What a larger gross cannot establish

The same-date comparison supports a clear observation: U.S.–Canada cinemas collected substantially more money than during the corresponding periods in 2023, 2024 and 2025.

It does not establish that more tickets were sold. The supplied sources contain no complete, comparable market-wide admissions series for those periods. Estimated ticket counts for individual films cannot fill that gap without adding assumptions.

Gross revenue also cannot answer whether a film was profitable, because the chart does not supply production and marketing costs. Nor does the size of the remainder measure artistic variety or cinema access. Answering those questions would require evidence about the kinds of films shown, where they played, how long they remained available and who could reach or afford the screenings.

Geography matters too. In August, NBCUniversal announced that its releases had passed $4 billion worldwide, divided into $1.53 billion domestically and $2.48 billion internationally. That first-party corporate milestone describes one studio across global markets; it cannot be added to or substituted for the complete U.S.–Canada calendar total.

Through September 25, then, the defensible conclusion is precise: nominal U.S.–Canada box-office revenue was running well above the same stage of several recent years. Three blockbusters supplied 26.83% of it, the top ten supplied 53.3%, and all other films earning revenue during the period supplied 73.17% beyond the leading trio. Whether the year also represented an admissions recovery requires evidence counted in people, not dollars.