2026's $1 Billion Box Office Juggernaut Is Officially Taking Over Streaming

When it comes to billion-dollar box office success in 2026, it's impossible to look past Spider-Man: Brand New Day. Called "the best Spidey adventure in 20 years" by Collider's Charlie Ridgley, Brand New Day has not just earned widespread critical praise; it has also broken many major box office records. The biggest of these records came recently, as Brand New Day finally surpassed Star Wars: The Force Awakens to become the highest-grossing film of all time domestically.

In total, the return of Tom Holland's Friendly Neighborhood Spidey has made almost $2.5 billion worldwide, and is the third-highest-grossing film of all time, with it now improbable it will climb any higher. But the groundwork for Brand New Day's billion-dollar success this year was laid long before it. Of all the usual suspects in the elite box office group, such as MCU movies and animated sequels, one of 2026's billion-dollar hits was the very first of its kind in cinema history.

We're talking about Antoine Fuqua's musical biopic, Michael, which became the first biopic of all time to hit $1 billion in theaters, surpassing Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer in the process. Thanks to a late release surge in Japan, the film broke the record in July and currently ranks as one of the 60 highest-grossing films of all time. But Michael's off-the-wall success doesn't stop there, as it has continued to prove a hit on streaming since. At the time of writing, Michael has rejoined the list of most-watched movies on the iTunes charts in the U.S., which is currently topped by the Spielberg-esque sci-fi thriller The End of Oak Street.

What Other Movies Have Made $1 Billion in 2026?

It was, unsurprisingly, an animated sequel that first topped the billion-dollar mark in 2026. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, which features the voices of Chris Pratt, Anya Taylor-Joy, and Jack Black, joined the likes of Zootopia 2 and Ne Zha 2 in proving animated returns to be fruitful ventures, as did Toy Story 5, which took Pixar's flagship franchise back to the billion-dollar boundary this summer. The only other film to hit $1 billion in 2026, like Brand New Day, starred Tom Holland, Zendaya, and Jon Bernthal, as Christopher Nolan broke his personal box office record with an adaptation of Homer's The Odyssey.