This year's summer movie season ended on an abnormal note: for the first time in five years, no film has grossed more than 3 billion yuan at the box office. Is the biggest dark horse *Love Letter to Grandma* or *Here Comes the Bull*?
The just-concluded summer movie season posted a final box office of 12.498 billion yuan, with indicators including total number of moviegoers and total screening sessions also on the rise. This fairly solid result extends the steady growth trend of the schedule over the past three years, but when it comes to the question of what propped up the box office, this year's summer movie season can be described as full of "anomalies".
First, the top-grossing films are concentrated in the 1.5 billion yuan and 2 billion yuan range. Three films, *Kung Fu Women's Football*, *Welcome to Dragon Restaurant* and *Eight Immortals!*, took nearly half of the total box office of the season, while the absence of blockbuster titles grossing over 3 billion yuan marks the first time that films of this tier have missed the summer movie season in nearly five years. Second, the traditional scheduling rhythm of the film season has been completely disrupted. Last-minute schedule confirmations and temporary schedule withdrawals/reschedulings have become the new normal, bringing more uncertainties to film distribution and giving this year's summer season a sense of chaos and disorder.
Source: *2026 Summer Movie Season Data Insight*, Maoyan Professional Edition
In this process, many long-standing industry rules of thumb have repeatedly failed, with multiple films posting completely unexpected box office curves. *Spy Catcher*, which grossed less than 120 million yuan, and *Love Letter to Grandma*, which grossed 2 billion yuan, form two extreme cases. The latter, with an ultra-long tail effect, raked in nearly 600 million yuan at the summer box office and secured a spot in the season's top 10 highest-grossing films. Of course, the most "surreal" case is *Niu Lai*. This top-tier "poorly-reviewed film" with a first-day screening share of less than 0.1% not only hit the passing mark on Douban ratings, but also grabbed nearly 60 million yuan of box office in the summer season among a crowd of well-received high-quality works...
Against the backdrop of "not playing by the usual rules", this year's summer movie season seems to be pulled by two opposing forces, heading towards loss of control on one hand while creating pleasant surprises on the other.
A chaotic schedule, a "disordered" summer
Looking at the overall box office trend of this year's summer movie season, the final result of nearly 12.5 billion yuan has exceeded many people's expectations. The reason lies in the unusually sluggish first half of the season. Data from Maoyan Professional Edition shows that the total box office in June was only 1.645 billion yuan, while the monthly box office in July and August reached 5.019 billion yuan and 5.833 billion yuan respectively, indicating that the box office potential in the first half of the summer season was far from being fully released.
Source: Maoyan Professional Edition
It is worth noting that there were no lack of major blockbusters hitting the market during this period. A typical example is *Spy Catcher*, the new work of Feng Xiaogang, which boasts an extremely strong cast and is rumored to have an investment cost ranging from 250 million yuan to 300 million yuan, but up to now, the cumulative box office of the film has not exceeded 120 million yuan.
Under the overall sluggish market and poor performance of major blockbusters, film distributors who originally held a wait-and-see attitude became more cautious about confirming release dates, and the summer movie season once fell into a deadlock, until Stephen Chow brought *Kung Fu Women's Football* for a last-minute schedule confirmation — the film was hastily released on July 11, only 5 days after the official release date announcement. Soon, that day, with a box office of 324 million yuan, became the key watershed of this year's summer movie season. Before that, there were only 3 days with single-day box office exceeding 100 million yuan in the summer season.
However, almost at the same time as the schedule became lively, it fell into a rare state of "chaos".
The most intuitive manifestation is that the traditional mode of confirming the release date 1 to 2 months in advance was almost completely abandoned in this season. When film distributors cannot figure out who their competitors are in advance, it is difficult for them to make pre-judgments, which leads to a high-density phenomenon of last-minute schedule withdrawal and post-release rescheduling.
The day before the release of *Kung Fu Women's Football*, *The Three Kingdoms Part 1: The Battle for Luoyang* officially premiered. Later, the film chose to withdraw from the schedule under the squeeze of *Kung Fu Women's Football* and *Eight Immortals!*, the former focused on "nostalgia marketing" while the latter became the biggest dark horse of the season.
Also during this period, the super blockbuster *Penghu Naval Battle*, which was originally scheduled to be released on July 25, was withdrawn at the last minute due to technical reasons. The film gathered a group of actors including Jackson Yee and Zhao Liying, and was originally one of the championship seed players in this year's summer season. *The Stars Are Shining* in the same schedule also urgently withdrew from the schedule two days after its release. These actions further exacerbated the chaos of the schedule, the vacated market was re-evaluated, and a new round of last-minute schedule confirmation and withdrawal followed.
First, *Eight Immortals!*, whose word-of-mouth had already fermented, was released one week ahead of schedule, and then *Annual Meeting Can't Stop 2!* was also released one week ahead of schedule. The two films shared the core fermentation period originally reserved for *Penghu Naval Battle* and *The Stars Are Shining*. In addition, two days after the release date of *Welcome to Dragon Restaurant*, which features a large number of performances by Shen Teng, the film began advanced screenings; the suddenly scheduled *Empty Gun* seized the tail of the summer and became the main work in the second half of the summer season.
At this point, after *Kung Fu Women's Football*, the summer movie season almost formed a situation of "hit films every week". In sharp contrast to the cold first half, the "chaos" shown in the summer season is increasingly worthy of in-depth consideration.
Multiple "extreme" cases emerge, the logic of content and promotion is changing
The reason is that this "chaos" is not simply a problem of misplaced film schedules. Its essence is that the old order of the industry is moving towards "loss of control". The emergence of many "abnormal" phenomena and "extreme" typical cases in the schedule are all strong proofs.
At the content level, a major feature of this year's summer movie season is the overall better word-of-mouth. Works such as *Welcome to Dragon Restaurant*, *Eight Immortals!* and *Odyssey* all have a Douban score of over 8 points. The overall better performance also means that high quality has become the "stepping stone" to attract audiences to the cinema, rather than the key to creating a gap between different films.
This point has actually echoed the changes at the promotion level. Data from the *2026 Summer Movie Market Insight Report* released by Beacon Professional Edition shows that among the factors driving people to watch movies, the top three factors — "the theme/story attracts me", "high rating" and "exquisite production" — are all directly related to the quality and word-of-mouth of the film, while the main reasons that hinder movie viewing point to the opposite situation.
Source: *2026 Summer Movie Market Insight Report*, Beacon Professional Edition
Therefore, an important trend of this year's summer movie season is that it is more difficult for films to become viral. Good word-of-mouth can only affect "whether the audience will come", to make the audience stay and turn into spontaneous promoters of the film, a sufficiently prominent advantage is also required. Judging from the overall performance of films in the season, this "prominent advantage" mostly points to whether the film has found a relatable entry point for the audience, that is, the point of emotional resonance.
For example, *The Three Kingdoms Part 1: The Battle for Luoyang* also got a good Douban score of 8 points, but its serious theme and higher viewing threshold failed to keep the audience coming continuously. Even, the film chose to withdraw from the schedule about half a month after its release, which was also based on its good word-of-mouth, hoping to leave enough space for public praise to ferment. But during this process, the film did not find the entry point of emotional resonance between itself and the audience. In contrast, *Eight Immortals!*, which is closer to the audience, delivered a completely different box office curve.
On this basis, film content and promotion have encountered the most extreme "boomerang effect" in this year's summer season. For a long time in the past, film promotion often raised the audience's expectation for the film, but when the audience walked into the cinema, they were disappointed, which is the so-called "deceptive marketing".
Nowadays, film distributors have shifted the overall focus of promotion to the post-release period, which is not only due to the objective factor of schedule chaos, but also because the past marketing misalignment has made more audiences tend to trust the real post-release word-of-mouth.
In this year's summer season, *Spy Catcher*, which does not have poor word-of-mouth, fell into public controversy, with its box office far below expectations; while *Niu Lai*, which has extremely poor texture, got nearly 60 million yuan of box office. These are the two different outcomes under the disorder of traditional marketing. Among them, the "surreal" performance of *Niu Lai* is inseparable from a large number of audience's spontaneous meme-style marketing, and the underlying reason for this phenomenon is that a large number of audiences have joined the "anti deceptive marketing" movement in a retaliatory manner.
Imported films make a comeback, genre films gain momentum, a new order is taking shape
Objectively speaking, the total box office growth of this year's summer movie season is partly due to the strategy of expanding market size through reasonable pricing. The average ticket price of 35.7 yuan in this season has hit a new low in nearly 5 years. Even so, the performance of this year's summer season is still surprising, because while "chaos" and "disorder" exist, some new phenomena are also emerging.
From the perspective of content supply, on the premise that the market siphon effect is still strong, the box office space for mid-tier films is still being compressed. For example, in this year's summer season, the top 4 highest-grossing films all grossed over 1.5 billion yuan, while the fifth-ranked *Odyssey* dropped sharply to 600 million yuan, with a large gap between them. However, these films have gone deeper into more vertical tracks, and even many niche themes have produced works that exceeded expectations.
For example, in this year's summer season, the two horror films *Obsession* and *The Backrooms* jointly grossed over 400 million yuan. In terms of user portrait, the young users of such films are highly concentrated, and the proportion of moviegoers under 24 years old is over 40%, which is much higher than the market average of about 26%. Similarly, *Blind Fury*, a decompression-focused action film, has become a model of action films. Its selling point of real fighting and every punch hitting hard has raised the proportion of male audiences to nearly 70%.
Still from *Obsession*
Obviously, the differentiated supply of genre films is continuously optimizing the user structure of the film market. This point is consistent with the positive impact brought by the comeback of imported films.
Data from Maoyan Professional Edition shows that in this year's summer movie season, the box office share of imported films reached 28.3%, hitting a new high in nearly 6 years. Among them, *Spider-Man: Brand New Day* successfully attracted young audiences and the sinking market with the appeal of its IP. Nolan's new work *Odyssey* is more in line with the viewing preferences of audiences in high-tier cities. In addition, imported commercial blockbusters naturally fit the viewing preferences of male audiences, and the box office contribution driven by imported films makes the gender structure of this year's summer season more balanced.
In addition, in this year's summer season, parent-child movie viewing is no longer limited to low-age oriented animated films. From *Kung Fu Women's Football*, *Eight Immortals!* to *Niu Lai*, the scenarios of parent-child movie viewing are constantly expanding.
It can be seen that the age coverage and structural distribution of the market audience are further improving, which is a benign performance presented in the process of the industry brewing a new order. Behind this, the changes from content, promotion to market structure are concentratedly demonstrated through this "abnormal" schedule sample, which is also the key reason why this year's summer movie season has higher discussion value.
This article is from the WeChat Official Account "Mirror Entertainment", and is authorized for release by 36Kr.