Saturday, July 25, 2026

Christopher Nolan's The Odyssey is refusing to come down from orbit. The three-hour Homer adaptation held strong with $25 million on Friday as it rolled into its second weekend still parked at number one, a hold most R-rated epics can only dream of (via Variety). The film has already crossed roughly $306 million worldwide in under a week, enough to pass the entire lifetime global haul of Blade Runner 2049, and it now stands as Nolan's biggest global debut ever (via Variety).

The overseas story is just as loud. The Odyssey broke records at the U.K. and Ireland box office, Nolan's home turf, posting one of the biggest openings the market has seen for a director whose name alone now sells tickets (via Variety). For a talky, subtitled-in-places myth with no superheroes, that is the kind of number studios frame and hang on the wall.

Behind the juggernaut, the summer holdovers are doing quiet work. Disney's live-action Moana took third on Friday with about $3.1 million and is eyeing roughly $10.8 million across its third weekend, with Toy Story 5 close behind (via Variety). The weekend's notable newcomer is Hadestown, Bleecker Street's filmed capture of the Tony-winning Broadway musical (a "proshot," industry shorthand for a professionally shot stage production), opening wide as counterprogramming for anyone not in the mood for a Greek war.

Marvel just proved the hype machine still works. The first trailer for Avengers: Doomsday, the December 18 tentpole that pits the Avengers and X-Men against Robert Downey Jr.'s Doctor Doom, racked up 503 million views in 24 hours, the biggest launch in Disney's history (via Variety). That is second only to the 719 million that Sony's Spider-Man: Brand New Day trailer pulled, making these two the loudest trailer drops the industry has ever seen. Marvel released it July 20, several days ahead of its Comic-Con return, so the online record was banked before a single fan sat down in San Diego.

All of which sets up tonight. Marvel takes over Comic-Con's Hall H on Saturday at 5:30 p.m. PT, its first big-room panel since skipping the convention in 2025, with Kevin Feige and "special guests" expected to unveil fresh Doomsday footage and give Tom Holland's Spider-Man: Brand New Day a push a week before it opens (via Screen Rant). The safe bet: a new trailer for the room, and possibly an online drop right after.

Tyler Rake is back in the field. Netflix's Extraction 3 is officially greenlit and now shooting, with Chris Hemsworth reprising the mercenary who has cheated death twice already and Idris Elba returning from Extraction 2 (via Collider). Stuntman-turned-director Sam Hargrave is back behind the camera and Joe and Anthony Russo are producing, with cameras rolling across India, Thailand, Prague and Australia. Netflix is also spinning the brand into a universe, developing the offshoots Mercenary (with Omar Sy) and Tygo (headlined by Eternals' Ma Dong-seok).

Paramount finally cracked open its Star Trek reboot. Jonathan Goldstein and John Francis Daley, the writing-directing duo behind Game Night and Dungeons & Dragons: Honor Among Thieves, gave the first real plot details: the film will follow entirely new characters set "a little further into the future than we've been before," not the Original Series or Next Generation crews fans know (via Collider). Daley says the script is still in progress, with no cast or release date locked, so treat it as a promising blueprint rather than a launch.

Kevin Hart is chasing his youth on Netflix. 72 Hours, which premiered worldwide on the streamer July 24, casts Hart as a 40-year-old ad executive accidentally added to a Gen Z group chat who books the flight to a Miami bachelor party rather than bow out (via IndieWire). Directed by Hart's frequent collaborator Tim Story and co-starring Marcello Hernandez, it lands as a breezy Hangover riff that reviewers found watchable but well short of the film it is chasing.

The month's real streaming gets are theatrical castoffs. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, 2026's first billion-dollar grosser, has landed on Peacock, while Project Hail Mary, the Andy Weir adaptation that took $683 million worldwide, arrives on Prime Video after its theatrical and rental windows (via The Wrap). For the streamers, these are the payoff for letting a hit play cinemas first: the biggest movies of the year showing up at home just as the buzz peaks.

Venice is rolling out the lifetime honors before the fall race even starts. The festival will hand its Golden Lion for Lifetime Achievement to Ellen Burstyn, the Exorcist and Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore star, presenting the award at the screening of Flesh Impact, a new short directed by (and co-starring) jury president Maggie Gyllenhaal (via Variety). George Clooney is the festival's other honorary Golden Lion recipient this year, giving the Lido two American icons to fete when it opens September 2 with Danny Boyle's Rupert Murdoch drama Ink.

The megamerger reshaping Hollywood just hit a legal wall. Paramount has agreed not to close its roughly $110 billion takeover of Warner Bros. until next year at the earliest, after a coalition of state attorneys general won a temporary restraining order blocking the deal on competition grounds (via Deadline). Under the terms, the companies stay separate until five days after a court rules on the merits or June 1, 2027, whichever comes first. A combined Paramount-Warner would control north of a quarter of the domestic box office, and theater owners who have spent months warning about that concentration just got a reprieve, however temporary.