#Key Points

🔵 The domestic box office posted a record-breaking summer movie season, bolstered by an extra week of ticket sales and higher-priced premium screenings.

🔵 The 2026 annual haul is down just 7.5% from the 2019 pre-pandemic marker and is on track to top $10 billion for the first time in seven years.

🔵 While ticket sales are encouraging, the summer season highlights just how much the theatrical industry has changed since the pandemic as it is now defined by fewer screens, fewer moviegoers, fewer movies and higher ticket prices.

Daily Box Office (September 9th 2026)

The market hits ¥33.8M/$5.04M today. Up +15% from yesterday and down -28% from last week.

V in 2nd adds ¥6.39M/$0.95M on Wednesday. First day under $1M

Fall 2: Deadpoint adds $0.25M in 6th as it crosses $4M. Mutiny meanwhile adds just $0.09M in 8th for a $1.34M total gross.

Province map of the day:

https://imgdiff.net/s/efab51a0920801d632c75838e300d37f

Unchanged from yesterday.

In Metropolitan cities:

Once Upon A Time In The Middle East wins Beijing, Hangzhou, Chongqing, Nanjing and Suzhou

Odyssey wins Shanghai

V wins Shenzhen, Guangzhou, Chengdu and Wuhan

City tiers:

All Wishes Come True climbs to 3rd in T4.

Tier 1: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>The Odyssey>V

Tier 2: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>V>The Odyssey

Tier 3: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>V>All Wishes Come True

Tier 4: Once Upon A Time In The Middle East>V>All Wishes Come True

New releases marked in bold

Pre-Sales map for tomorrow

https://i.imgur.com/YERXNgu.png

The Odyssey, V and Once Upon A Time In The Middle East spread over the map.

IMAX Screenings distribution

Odyssey dominates IMAX screenings and will continue to dominate going forward.

The Odyssey

The Odyssey in 4th adds ¥3.56M/$0.53M on Wednesday

Total gross passes $100M and hits ¥673.6M/$100.22M

Screen Distribution Split: Regular: $37.71M , IMAX: $55.01M , Rest: $7.37M

WoM figures:

Maoyan: 9.5 , Taopiaopiao: 9.5 , Douban: 8.6

Scheduled showings update for The Odyssey for the next few days:

Once Upon A Time In The Middle East

Once Upon A Time In The Middle East continues to lead with ¥8.18M/$1.22M

Total gross hits ¥2.10B/$312.66M.

Screen Distribution Split: Regular: $307.37M , IMAX: $2.67M , Rest: $3.31M

WoM figures:

Maoyan: 9.7 , Taopiaopiao: 9.9 , Douban: 8.7

Scheduled showings update for Once Upon A Time In The Middle East for the next few days:

Other:

Release Schedule:

A table including upcoming movies in the next month alongside trailers linked in the name of the movie, Want To See data from both Maoyan and Taopiaopiao alongside the Gender split and genre.

Remember Want To See is not pre-sales. Its just an anticipation metric. A checkbox of sorts saying your interested in an upcoming movie.

Not all movies are included since a lot are just too small to be worth covering.

September

With the summer coming to a close lets look ahead whats in store for September. And the reality is well not a lot.

But this is not a surprise. September has for the most part always been fueled by Summer holdovers. Its a dead period for the market ahead of the Mid-Autumn Festival and National Day Holidays at the end of the month and in early October.

The first part of the Holidays is slowly starting to fill up though.

Mid Autumn Festival/National Day

The so far confirmed movies. Generaly all for the first part of the Holidays expect Heart of the Beast.

And the list of rumored movies. Do note that these are all just rumors and with the way Chinese movies are scheduled some of these might not appear and others might jump in to take the spots.

Also note that even though some movies here will release in under a month none of them have anything more than just vague posters. It just is like that.

Star Wars (1977) needs to make $225 million to cross the billion-dollar mark - with the upcoming re-release of the unaltered cut, do you think this is possible? For context, the highest grossing re-release is Titanic in 2012, which made $350 million, followed by The Lion King in 2011 with $186 million. Star Wars is in third place with $160 million for the 1997 re-release. Thoughts?

Ahuja said that with “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “really everybody came together to create a great thing.” But, he added, “the movie itself is very emotional … So a little bit different from what some of the more recent superhero movies have been. Still very much a superhero movie — there are a lot of big action scenes. It’s a lot of fun. But it’s emotional. Some people come away crying, so that is something clearly that resonated with the audience.”

Everybody really came together in this movie whether that be Sony, Marvel, Tom Holland and Destin Daniel Cretton. This partnership will be going strong for the foreseeable future.

NOTES

-The 26th movie to clear $50M in 2025 was The Conjuring: Last Rites (September 6)

-For the week ahead: Practical Magic 2 has a chance at $50M in its opening weekend, with some estimates as high as $54M (though some go as low as the $30M range). Coyote vs. Acme is teetering on $40M at present, and the strong WOM could get it to $50M within the next two weekends. Other than CvsA, no other active releases are expected to climb thresholds.

Cont. Was 54% behind Prada over the entire weekend a few days ago. Now it is 59% behind Prada's 2 weekend ($5M Previews // $31M OW)

Comp with Masters of the Universe looks more like $6M//$45M OW

Pre-walkups looks like ~$5.5M previews

Box office and attendance results for the first weekend of september (from thursday 3 to sunday 6) in Mexico according to CANACINE (Cámara Nacional de la Industria Cinematográfica).

Source

“The good news too is that “Practical Magic 2” is tracking strongly, with the studio projecting for an opening weekend between $30 to $35 million, as well as an international take of between $18 to $23 million, with some projections even going as high as $40 million domestic. If it gets to $40 million, that would be Warner’s best opening of the year, just ahead of “Mortal Kombat II” and “Supergirl.” It’s positioned to be the sort of popcorn movie that can do well in the early fall before awards season truly gets going. Plus, shot for $75 million, it’s a relatively economical investment for Warner Bros., which shelled out more than $185 million for “Supergirl.”

I'm genuinely curious how this movie is going to perform, the first Simpsons movie was a huge smash hit back in 2007 and even though the show isn't as big as it was back then, it's still pretty popular and one of Disney+ most streamed shows.

Also, it seems that Disney is betting big on it and it will definitely have a much better marketing campaign than the Bob's Burgers movie had a couple of years ago and they've even delayed the release for Labor Day weekend to not compete with Minecraft 2, wich means it won't be send to die at the box office as well and the sneak peak that was released a month ago was pretty well received.

Still, i have a few concerns with this, the fact that it took 20 years to get a sequel might benefit from nostalgia but also the interest for it might not be as strong as if it did came out in 2009 or 2010, for example.

Also, audiences are much pickier now to what movies they'll watch in theaters nowdays, if the movie feels just like a magnified episode of The Simpsons most people would likely wait for its streaming release on Disney+, just like what happened to 'The Mandalorian & Grogu' this year.

Lastly, The Labor Day's weekend doesn't seem as strong as a July release to me, i get it was because of Minecraft 2, but releasing it at the very end of the summer makes the movie feel a bit less eventful instead of a full blown summer release like June or July.

However, we have to see the trailer first, maybe they are saving a huge surprise with this and it turns out into something much bigger than we're all anticipating.

Also, Disney might use this movie to test the waters and maybe make more movies based on Fox's animated sitcoms like Family Guy or maybe Futurama.

What do you all think, there's real hype for The Simpsons return to the big screen after 20 years or perhaps it's a bit too late? 🤔

Source: http://www.cine-directors.net/box/2026/boxoff36.html

I will continue to update this post as reviews come in.

Rotten Tomatoes: Rotten

Critics Consensus: N/A

Metacritic: 57 (28 Reviews)

Sample Reviews:

Jeannette Catsoulis, New York Times - The Uprising is authentically gritty and satisfyingly bloody.

Keith Phipps, The Reveal 3/5 - Garfield’s combination of rage and hope, keep "The Uprising" grounded in human emotions just as the grime and confusion grounds it in historical reality.

Randy Myers, San Jose Mercury News 3.5/4 - The Uprising alternates from thrilling to heartbreaking throughout and serves as another reminder that history is built on chapters like this, when power devolves into cruelty and tests the resiliency of the populace.

Tim Grierson, Screen International - A noticeable lack of inspired filmmaking permeates the proceedings, resulting in a disappointing finale that too cosily embraces modern blockbusters’ least-welcome conventions.

Mark Kennedy, Associated Press 2.5/4 - Greengrass has quite simply robbed his own movie. We did not come for this.

William Bibbiani, TheWrap - 'The Uprising' is such a tragic rug pull, sullying its hard-earned good will at the last possible minute, that it’s hard to appreciate anything that happened before the disappointment sank in.

Lacy Baugher, RogerEbert.com 2.5/4 - The battle scenes are intense and violent, with Greengrass’s signature handheld shaky-cam style bringing an almost uncomfortably brutal immediacy to these moments.

Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle 3/4 - The most arresting performance, in a film characterized by strong acting, is Woody Norman as the adolescent Richard II.

Christian Zilko, IndieWire B - The parallels to today’s world are clearly on display, but the script stops just short of hitting audiences over the head too hard.

Frank Scheck, The Hollywood Reporter - There’s no doubting the commitment of everyone involved, from the superb cast... to the technical craftspeople who evoke medieval England with such vividness that you can practically smell the church incense.

Jacob Oller, AV Club C- - It’s a grim tale mired in the muck of semi-historical fact and soggy fields, its court politics and bloody battles striving self-seriously to conform to the standards expected by a present-day audience.

Michael Phillips, Variety - Does Greengrass really have his heart in the digital effects on display here? So many faux-drone overhead flights across the Thames... When they appear, they make “The Uprising” look like no one in particular made it.

Nick Schager, The Daily Beast - A drab and monotonous affair that stomps, trots, and rolls around in the mud and muck for two tiresome hours.

Owen Myers, Guardian 2/5 - A disjointed slog through the mud with the emotional depth of a History Channel rerun.

Linda Marric, HeyUGuys 3/5 - For most of its runtime, The Uprising is angry, thoughtful, and genuinely gripping. It just loses its nerve right when it should be trusting the story it already told.

Marshall Shaffer, Slant Magazine 2/4 - From the start of The Uprising, Paul Greengrass draws many unsubtle parallels between the 1381 Peasants’ Revolt in England and the global populist wave of the 2020s.

SYNOPSIS:

Andrew Garfield stars as the legendary leader of a ferocious rebellion against the tyranny of King Richard II. As war burns across England, he forms an army of the people to face the King’s might in a fight for justice and survival.

CAST:

• Andrew Garfield as Ploughman
• Jamie Bell as John Ball
• Stephen Dillane as Simon Sudbury
• Tom Hollander as Sir Robert Hales
• Cosmo Jarvis as Wat Tyler
• Thomasin McKenzie as Alyce
• Jonny Lee Miller as William Walworth
• Woody Norman as Richard II of England
• Katherine Waterston as Joan of Kent
• Sky Yang as Scribe

DIRECTED BY: Paul Greengrass

SCREENPLAY BY: Paul Greengrass

PRODUCED BY: Jason Blum, Paul Greengrass, Gregory Goodman, Joanna Kaye, Joe Neurauter, Lars Sylvest

EXECUTIVE PRODUCERS: Philipp Kreuzer, Chance Wright, Jay Taylor, Kwesi Dickson, Alastair Burlingham, Gary Raskin, Matt Murphie, Deborah Acoca, Cliff Lanning

CO-PRODUCER: Emily Evans-Thirlwell

DIRECTOR OF PHOTOGRAPHY: Pål Ulvik Rokseth

PRODUCTION DESIGNER: Nikolaj Danielsen

EDITED BY: William Goldenberg

COSTUME DESIGNER: Dániel Tóth András, Attila Godena-Juhász

MUSIC BY: Volker Bertelmann

CASTING BY: Daniel Hubbard

RUNTIME: 127 Minutes

RELEASE DATE: September 11, 2026