Are you ready for the summer? Are you ready for the sunshine? Are you ready for the birds and bees, the apple trees, and a whole lotta foolin’ around?
That catchy refrain from June 1979 introduced cinemagoers to the little Canadian summer camp movie that could: Meatballs, which grossed $70 million (all numbers in USD) worldwide and brought together funnyman Bill Murray and Toronto director Ivan Reitman, who would later rake in over four times that amount with their 1984 summer blockbuster Ghostbusters. Forty-seven years later, that Meatballs theme song seems so quaint, as summers are all about remakes and IPs, sequels times three, and a whole lotta CGI-ing around.
Yes, the official season of blockbusters is upon us. It’s that time of year when we actually escape the sunshine and its harsh rays by ducking into air-conditioned theatres with bottomless buckets of popcorn and ice-cold fountain drinks. And in 2026, the cinematic competition for attention is nothing short of epic. The Three Kings of Summer Box Office are represented: Steven Spielberg is back directing the alien-mystery-thriller Disclosure Day, Christopher Nolan sails into the cinesphere with an IMAX take on one of the oldest stories of all time, The Odyssey, and, while George Lucas isn’t technically involved in Mandalorian and Grogu, this Yoda-fied spinoff belongs firmly in his Star Wars galaxy. Yet even these don’t-bet-against-us auteurs are facing stiff competition for the movie-of-the-summer title, from heavy-hitting franchises: Spider-Man: Brand New Day; Supergirl; Minions & Monsters; Toy Story 5; and a live-action Moana. The whole supersized lot is expected to bring in a combined $12 billion box office worldwide from May to September – a haul that could finance about 22 Star Wars: The Force Awakens (the most expensive movie on record).
Here, we take a look at the summer blockbuster journey, from a man vs shark origin story to today’s battlefield of behemoths.
464 | The number of movie screens on which Jaws opened in the U.S. and Canada on June 20, 1975. It was an unprecedented move at the time – today 4,000-plus is the norm. Directed by a 27-year-old Steven Spielberg, the film was considered a disaster before it was released: 104 days and nine million dollars over budget, with a 25-foot-long and 6,000-pound mechanical star that rarely worked. But the movie hit like a tidal wave: not only did Jaws earn a 5,100 percent profit, it introduced the world to the idea of the summer blockbuster. And the film’s tagline – “You’ll never go in the water again” – proved prescient: that summer, there was a 28 percent drop in beach attendance on the U.S. coast.
$150,000 | The salary George Lucas was paid as writer and director of the original Star Wars. He accepted a $350,000 reduction in order to keep the rights to merchandising and sequels – a move that eventually made him a billionaire. Not that he believed that would happen. After horrible test screenings, Lucas thought the movie would bomb, and he skipped the premiere to go on a Hawaiian vacation with his buddy Spielberg – where they came up with the idea for their 1981 collaboration-turned-franchise-gold, Raiders of the Lost Ark.
100,000 | The number of sticks of gum that the cast of Grease went through during the making of their 1978 hit. With the teenybopper characters chewing their way through the ’50s-era musical, they burst the bubble of fellow summer release Jaws 2. Grease dominated the box office and gave radio stations chills with its multiplyin’ hit songs: You’re the One That I Want, Greased Lightnin’, Hopelessly Devoted to You and Summer Nights. Tell me more, tell me more …
363 | Number of days that E.T. stayed in the theatres – from June 1982 until June 1983. And it was re-released on the big screen just two years later. Director Spielberg blocked the film’s move onto VHS for six years, believing that the magic of his extra-terrestrial star (which cost $1.5 million – or 15 percent of the budget – to make) would be lost on a television.
40 | Percentage jump in sales of Ray-Ban Aviator sunglasses in 1986 after the release of Top Gun – and another 40 percent spike happened 36 summers later after Top Gun: Maverick buzzed the box-office tower. And yet, that pales in comparison to star Tom Cruise’s other shades stat: Ray-Ban Wayfarer sales climbed from 18,000 a year to 360,000 in 1983 after he rocked them in Risky Business.
50,000 | Number of letters Warner Bros. received in 1989 complaining about the casting of Michael Keaton – a.k.a. Mr. Mom – as the titular star in Tim Burton’s Batman. It was the first movie ever to hit $40 million in its opening weekend. Director Christopher Nolan would face similar hostility when he signed Heath Ledger to play the Joker in The Dark Knight. The movie would become the number one film of 2008 and Ledger won a posthumous Oscar for the role.
4 | Number of Jurassic Park movies (out of seven) that have surpassed the $1 billion mark in global box office, including the original 1993 outing with Sam Neill, Jeff Goldblum, Laura Dern and a very hungry T. rex – although it took a 3D re-release in 2013 to get to the milestone. Last year’s reboot, Jurassic World Rebirth, with Scarlett Johansson, might need a re-release too as it came up just a little short at $869 million.
718.6 million | The record-breaking number of views in 24 hours following the release of the Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer – and it hit one billion in only four days. After an underperforming couple of years, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is spinning its way back this summer with the return of Tom Holland and Zendaya as Peter Parker and MJ – and trotting out its Oscar-winning franchise hero/villian Robert Downey Jr., in Avengers: Doomsday this December.
$2.42 billion | The staggering combined global box office total for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in 2023. The Barbenheimer phenomenon took the cinematic gains Top Gun: Maverick had made in bringing people back to the theatre post-pandemic and went nuclear with this unlikely feminist-beach-house-meets-renegade-quantum-physics double whammy.
100 | The percentage of IMAX film used by Nolan in his latest historical epic, The Odyssey. While the director has long worked with a hybrid of IMAX and standard 65 mm film stock, his latest creation starring Matt Damon as the Homeric hero, Odysseus, is the first-ever narrative feature to go all in on IMAX, filming two million feet of footage with a 400-pound camera rig over 91 days and across Greece, Iceland, Morocco, Italy and Scotland. After Tom Cruise tried to bump Oppenheimer out of IMAX theatres in 2023 in order to feature his Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, Nolan booked and sold out the specially formatted screens over a year in advance.
11 | The number of summer blockbusters directed by Steven Spielberg, including this June’s Disclosure Day. Add in the others that he has produced (including Back to the Future and Men In Black franchises) and he’s sitting at around 30. Anyone hoping to catch up, take heed: “You are going to need a bigger boat.”
