There is no shortage of big movies at the global box-office this year, but the current list of the 10 highest grossers of 2026 is interesting for a reason that goes beyond the numbers. Spider Man: Brand New Day is, quite simply, in another league. The Sony and Marvel film has reached about $2.22 billion worldwide and is still adding to that total. It has become the highest grossing film of 2026 by a huge margin and is now only around $44 million short of Titanic’s $2.264 billion lifetime worldwide gross.
Behind it, however, is a remarkably diverse group of films. Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey is currently second with about $1.45 billion worldwide. The film has not only become Nolan’s biggest grosser but has also overtaken Deadpool & Wolverine to become the highest grossing R rated film ever.
Toy Story 5 follows with about $1.13 billion, giving Disney and Pixar another billion dollar theatrical success. Michael is at roughly $1.02 billion, while The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has crossed $1 billion as well.
That means five films from the 2026 release calendar have already crossed the billion dollar mark worldwide. The next five make the picture even more interesting.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 has collected about $692 million, followed by Project Hail Mary at roughly $684 million. Pegasus 3 is at about $656 million, while Minions & Monsters and Obsession have both crossed the $500 million mark.
Put simply, every film in the current worldwide Top 10 has made at least half a billion dollars. But the numbers also reveal how different the routes to that money have been.
There is the obvious superhero event in Spider Man. There is Nolan’s large scale adaptation of The Odyssey. Pixar has Toy Story 5, Nintendo has Mario, and Illumination has Minions & Monsters. Michael Jackson’s life and music have powered a billion dollar biopic. The Devil Wears Prada 2 has turned nostalgia for a 20 year old property into nearly $700 million in theatrical revenue. Project Hail Mary has shown the continuing appeal of large scale science fiction. Obsession has emerged as a major horror success. And Pegasus 3, a Chinese production, has earned almost all of its reported worldwide gross outside North America.
Pegasus 3 has made about $655 million outside North America while reporting only around $1.4 million from the domestic market, according to Box Office Mojo. Its presence alongside Spider Man, Nolan, Pixar, Mario and Hollywood’s biggest franchises is a reminder that the global theatrical market is no longer simply a story about American studios exporting their biggest films.
The international contribution to several of these films is also substantial. About 62% of Spider Man‘s worldwide business has come from outside North America. The figure is about 63% for The Odyssey, 58% for Toy Story 5, 63% for Michael and 68% for The Devil Wears Prada 2. Minions & Monsters is also generating nearly 64% of its business internationally.
The global audience is clearly still turning up for established intellectual property. Spider Man, Toy Story, Mario and Minions make that difficult to dispute. But the list also shows that audiences have not completely abandoned films that sell themselves on something other than an existing superhero universe.
A Christopher Nolan film can still become a global event. A Michael Jackson biopic can cross a billion dollars. A science fiction adaptation can approach $700 million. A fashion comedy sequel can come surprisingly close to the same figure. Horror can produce a $500 million film. And a Chinese language film can sit comfortably among the world’s biggest releases.
The biggest film may be Spider Man: Brand New Day, and it is clearly the year’s extraordinary outlier. But the films sitting behind that headline suggest that the theatrical audience is not responding to just one kind of movie. That may ultimately be the more encouraging box-office story of 2026.
