5 Bold(ish) Hollywood Predictions for 2026, from Billion Dollar Box Office Hits to Warner Bros. Optimism

Back before Thanksgiving (remember then?), we started kicking around ideas for a bold predictions piece around what’s to come in 2026. Among the ideas in play was the thought that a company other than Paramount would win the bid for Warner Bros. Discovery. Turns out, that prediction was not only correct but a few weeks early, though we’re not so clairvoyant as to having guessed it would actually be Netflix.

Now that we are facing down the reality of Netflix buying Warner Bros. — not to mention Paramount refusing to go down without a hostile fight — we have a whole year ahead to be bold when it comes to predicting how the industry will evolve as a result of the acquisition.

But the industry will continue around it, and we have some other thoughts for what 2026 will — or won’t — bring.

Last year, we got two of nine predictions correct, which is better than nothing, but we’ll also give ourselves a couple of incompletes. Of the two we got right, Venu is gone, and Netflix is definitely doing a bunch of shit it said it would never do (buying a legacy studio being among them). But we’re still waiting on a Disney CEO successor, a Lionsgate sale, and Amazon MGM to take a step forward at the box office. Here’s what else we think could play out.

‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’

More Movies Will Reach $1 Billion Than 2025 (but the Annual Box Office Will Stay the Same)

Early projections from analysts on the 2026 box office are pretty rosy. 2025 ended just slightly above 2024 (about $8.6 billion) with a handful of fewer movies released, but we were wrong thinking it would bounce back to pre-pandemic levels (above $11 billion). That hasn’t curbed optimism for 2026.

We count six movies that we think are near locks to surpass $1 billion worldwide: “Avengers: Doomsday,” “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,” the live-action “Moana,” “Spider-Man: Brand New Day,” “Toy Story 5,” and “The Odyssey.” In ’25, only four movies surpassed $1 billion: “Zootopia 2,” “Avatar: Fire and Ash,” “Lilo & Stitch,” and China’s “Ne Zha 2” (though “A Minecraft Movie” came darn close). One of those six will probably fall short and underperform, and something unexpected will break out. We’re keeping an eye on “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu,” “Minions 3,” “Michael,” and “Project Hail Mary” as other potential contenders.

But our fear is that while the big movies might get bigger, the mid-size to smaller movies will continue to see the bottom fall out, and the overall box office gains year-to-year will be modest. That was true in 2025 when movies like “Tron: Ares,” “M3GAN 2.0,” “The Running Man,” “Christy,” “The Smashing Machine,” and more all underperformed. Other mid-budget films and indies evaporated, despite good reviews and expensive pushes after festival acquisitions. That problem could get even worse moving into 2026.

The Biggest Buyers at Sundance Will Be Distributors You Haven’t Heard of

Perhaps seeing the writing on the wall, all those sales we usually predict out of Sundance might be more muted this year considering the state of the box office for indies. And it might not be the Neons or A24s looking to scoop up titles. But that doesn’t mean there won’t be sales.

As we previously reported following TIFF and Venice, at least two new buyers, financiers Black Bear and Row K, popped up to fill the void and potentially find a place for these movies that the usual players won’t take a chance on any longer. Those two distributors likely still need content, and we predict there will be others we still haven’t heard of that will be formally announced in the next few weeks that will shake up this final year of Sundance in Park City.

People picket outside of FOX Studios on the first day of the Hollywood writers strike on May 2, 2023 in Los AngelesGetty Images

There Won’t Be a Sequel to the 2023 Writers’ Strike

As California’s new production incentives go into effect and start to raise optimism for production returning to Los Angeles, the last thing the industry needs is another labor stoppage from a strike. Actors, writers, and below-the-line talent are all struggling to find consistent work locally, and the labor unions will be looking to negotiate for more jobs and support into health plans for their members. The early chatter is that the studios meanwhile want to push for contracts to renew every five years rather than every three.

We’ll see if that one ends up being a non-starter, but the reality is no one can afford to be out of work for longer, and just like before, the unions won’t call for a strike unless absolutely necessary. But one of the big sticking points of the last strike, AI, is becoming clearer and less nebulous in terms of how Hollywood seeks to use it (more on that in a moment). The guilds will have new, more specific asks, and industry anger around AI is still strong enough that the studios would be dumb to poke the bear any further. Here’s hoping that means negotiations go smoother this time.

The Future of AI Won’t Involve Tilly Norwood

The Internet went into a tizzy last year when an article claimed that talent agents were circling representing the synthetically-generated actor Tilly Norwood. That turned out to be more press release hype than any concrete reality, and while we believe AI-generated actors will continue to be a thing, maybe even to the point that one goes viral, we also believe the future of AI in Hollywood lies elsewhere.

Hollywood CEOs aren’t getting hot and bothered about using AI to completely replace real-life movie stars; the guilds wouldn’t allow it, and audiences wouldn’t want it. Where they’re seeing dollar signs is the deal Disney made with OpenAI’s Sora and how Bob Iger wants to expand Disney+ capabilities to include user-generated AI content.

That’s where the real money is: using AI to let fans pay to easily make their own slop involving recognizable characters and settings, and then share and watch that content on your streaming service of choice. Could some enterprising filmmakers look to create their own digital version of Timothée Chalamet with Jacob Elordi’s height and tell an original story that way? Maybe, but we’re going to see a lot more slop before we get to that point.

General views of the Warner Bros. water tower lit up in red in support of the RESTART Act for the live event and production industry on the Warner Brothers movie studio lot on September 29, 2020 in Burbank, CaliforniaGC Images

The Warner Bros. Sale to Netflix Could Actually Be a Good Thing

There’s a whole lot of unknowns about Netflix buying Warner Bros., if Netflix even winds up with it, and a lot of them are scary. How much consolidation will there be? Will there be fewer movies in the market? What will Netflix do to the theatrical window? Does TCM survive? Does HBO Max survive? We’ll have a lot of time to unpack those in the coming months.

But for a moment, let’s take a step back and say that maybe this will have some real positives too. What happens to movie theaters could be the biggest among them, and if Netflix does, in fact, push for a 17-day theatrical window, as has been reported, could there be some seismic disruption to go along with it that helps bolster or improve the theatrical experience?

If anyone were to be the ones to find a way to radically innovate a way, it could be Netflix, and we’re already seeing inklings of that with what Greta Gerwig will command with “Narnia.” If Paramount were to absorb Warner Bros., you could argue there would be even more redundancies than there would be if Netflix does. HBO as a brand could wind up being a premium tile or offering bundled within Netflix, but who knows what happens to those shows or brands if it gets swallowed up elsewhere?

The arguments against those are that Disney buying Fox led to fewer movies in the marketplace, not more, and combining two major streamers could be worse for consumers, not better or cheaper. If Netflix is actually committed to theaters, we haven’t seen much evidence of it. And jobs will be lost no matter what happens.

But after a year in which Warner Bros. had big hits with original movies and Netflix had its most lucrative year at the box office yet between “KPop Demon Hunters” and the “Stranger Things” finale, we’re leaving space for optimism about this marriage.