Summer Movie Preview: ‘The Odyssey,’ ‘Disclosure Day’ and ‘Spider-Man’ lead packed lineup at cinemas

Postmedia looks at the must-see movies of the season

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Published May 05, 2026  •  Last updated 23 minutes ago  •  7 minute read

Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Tom Holland star in three of the summer's most anticipated movies. Photo by Toronto Sun Photo Illustration

Hollywood is eyeing one of the biggest moviegoing seasons in history this summer.

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From now until Labour Day, there will be no shortage of superheroes, sequels and big-budget epics, including Christopher Nolan’s big-screen adaptation of Homer’s The Odyssey.

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Comscore’s Paul Dergarabedian tells Postmedia that along with the Matt Damon-led historical drama, films like Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (May 22), Steven Spielberg’s UFO thriller Disclosure Day (June 12), Toy Story 5 (June 19) and Spider-Man: Brand New Day (July 31) could help power this year’s box office past the $4-billion mark, which studios have only been able to do once since the pandemic, back in 2023.

“This is shaping up to be one of the best summer movie seasons of all time,” Dergarabedian says from Los Angeles.

The films hitting cinemas between the first Friday in May and Labour Day represent around 40% of the year’s box office. Since the first Iron Man movie opened in 2008, most summers have kicked off with a Marvel movie, but Disney’s The Devil Wears Prada 2 marks the official start of the season at the multiplex after it opened on May 1.

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A fashionable kickoff and James Cameron’s return

“The Devil Wears Prada 2 is certainly a great way to kick off the summer movie season of 2026,” Dergarabedian says.

Coming 20 years after the original, The Devil Wears Prada 2 finds Anne Hathaway returning as Andy Sachs alongside her original co-stars Meryl Streep, Emily Blunt and Stanley Tucci.

Disney is hoping Prada 2 can ride a wave of nostalgia and enthusiasm for the first film to big profits. Director David Frankel says the movie speaks to a type of existential angst millennials are going through.

“Andy has had a career in journalism that mirrors a lot of people’s experiences …” Frankel told The Hollywood Reporter, adding it “is a movie about a woman in her 40s … (that’s) about how you make peace with the world as you find it, not the world that you wish existed.”

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway in a scene from ‘The Devil Wears Prada 2.’ Photo by 20th Century Studios

Just five months after powering Avatar: Fire and Ash to nearly $1.5 billion last Christmas, James Cameron is back in theatres with a Billie Eilish concert film that chronicles her Hit Me Hard and Soft Tour (May 8).

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Presented in immersive 3D, the film is being billed as an “innovative new concert experience.”

“Something special happens in the theatre, and it has to do with one simple thing,” Cameron told Postmedia last winter. “You don’t have a remote. You can’t pause it. You’re not in control. It’s like a roller-coaster leaving the platform, and you’re going to go for a ride and you can’t get off until it’s done.”

Nolan and Spielberg providing the buzz

After his Oscar-winning Oppenheimer made nearly a billion dollars three summers ago, on July 17, Nolan unveils his celebrity-filled The Odyssey, which stars Damon and also features Hathaway, Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Tom Holland and more.

After working with IMAX cameras for over a decade, this will be the first Hollywood feature to be shot entirely with the company’s high-resolution cameras. Showings went on sale a year ago and sold out within an hour. THR reported at the time that tickets were being resold on eBay and other sites for anywhere between $300 and $400.

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“Chris Nolan’s movie is fantastic. It’s unlike anything that I’ve ever seen before. I think when I saw the movie, I found myself asking a question that I haven’t asked about a movie for a long time, which is, ‘How did you do that?’ ” Holland said in a recent interview with GQ.

Appearing at CinemaCon in Las Vegas last month, Nolan said the experience was “an absolute nightmare to film … but in all the right ways.”

Matt Damon stars in ‘The Odyssey.’ Photo by Universal Pictures

With Disclosure Day, Spielberg will be tackling a subject that has been close to his heart for decades — the UFO phenomenon.

“My feeling right now is this … I don’t know any more than any of you do, but I have a very strong sneaking suspicion that we are not alone here on Earth right now,” he said during an on-stage chat at SXSW in March. “And I made a movie about that.”

Emily Blunt stars in Steven Spielberg’s ‘Disclosure Day.’ Photo by Universal Pictures

“Between Spielberg’s Disclosure Day and Nolan’s The Odyssey, this summer is truly a movie aficionado’s dream come true,” Dergarabedian says.

Superheroes, Sequels, Star Wars, Woody and Buzz and more

Despite Marvel shifting Avengers: Doomsday to Dec. 18, superheroes won’t be in short supply. Supergirl, the second feature film in James Gunn’s relaunched DCEU, flies into cinemas on June 26. Meanwhile, Holland will be webbing his way back into theatres on July 31 when Spider-Man: Brand New Day debuts.

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Holland describes the latest Marvel movie as “really, really fun.”

Dergarabedian says Brand New Day will likely help drive ticket sales well into August “which is typically the slowdown month for the summer.”

Erick Weber, who runs the YouTube channel Midnight Movie Talk, thinks the fourth Spidey adventure will be one of the biggest films of the summer.

Then there’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu. Originally conceived as a fourth season for The Mandalorian on Disney+, the latest space adventure is the first Star Wars movie in nearly seven years.

As he previewed the film last year at Star Wars Celebration, Favreau said The Mandalorian and Grogu will utilize larger cameras and full-scale models to take advantage of IMAX screens.

“It’s the funnest job you’ll ever have,” Favreau said.

But Weber thinks the new Star Wars flick is arriving with very little fanfare.

“There’s zero buzz for that film and Disney knows it,” he says. “They missed the release date on that by at least two years.”

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A few weeks later on June 5, Masters of the Universe, the popular animated series/toy franchise from the 1980s, will battle its way into theatres with Nicholas Galitzine’s He-Man facing off against Jared Leto’s Skeletor.

When Toy Story 4 came out in 2019, it was widely thought to be the last film for the celebrated Pixar franchise.

Executive producer Jonas Rivera told Postmedia he thought the fourquel was the end for Woody and Buzz. Tom Hanks (who voices Woody) also said he thought the animated story had reached its logical conclusion. But Andrew Stanton — who is one of the godfathers of Toy Story — said all along he never saw an end to Woody’s story.

Woody (Tom Hanks) and Bo Peep (Annie Potts) in a scene from Toy Story 4. Photo by Disney/Pixar

“What if it went farther? What if it was a trilogy with one kid, closed that up, handed it off to another kid and started another one?” Stanton said in a recent interview with The Associated Press. “That seemed really exciting to me because that’s the way life really goes with toys and mementos. They get passed down as hand-me-downs; they go from one kid to another.”

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Johnny Knoxville and his masochistic crew will be back on screen as they bid farewell to their hair-raising stunts in the fifth and final Jackass movie, aptly titled Jackass: Best and Last (June 26).

“I can’t do anything where I can get another concussion,” Knoxville said on the Books That Changed My Life podcast.

Karl Urban is also set to to join another popular video game franchise when he dons the shades to play Johnny Cage in Mortal Kombat II (May 8).

Meanwhile, Scary Movie 6 (June 5) will see the return of Regina Hall and Anna Faris, as well as Marlon and Shawn Wayans, for the latest entry in the Scream send-up.

Beyond the blockbusters

So far this year, audiences have turned up for original fare that has managed to captivate moviegoers with engaging storytelling. Hoppers and Project Hail Mary, both released in March, and last month’s Michael Jackson biopic are three of the biggest movies of 2026.

“Michael is the best opening act the summer season could wish for,” Dergarabedian says. So far, the film has danced its way to $238 million worldwide.

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So, in addition to blockbusters, there will be plenty of original films to watch this summer, including Hokum (now playing), which features Adam Scott as a novelist stuck inside a haunted hotel; Passenger, about a pair of road-trippers who are pursued by a demonic entity (May 22); a musical with Paul Rudd and Nick Jonas (Power Ballad, June 5); Hugh Jackman putting a new spin on Robin Hood (in Michael Sarnoski’s The Death of Robin Hood, June 19); Olivia Wilde’s relationship drama The Invite (June 26); and Ridley Scott’s The Dog Stars, which opens Aug. 28 and casts Jacob Elordi, Josh Brolin and Margaret Qualley as a trio of survivors navigating the world after a pandemic has wiped out nearly all of the planet’s population.

Speaking to Postmedia in March, Project Hail Mary directors Phil Lord and Chris Miller said moviegoers will show up if studios give them a reason to.

“Originality is what audiences want when they are paying money to see something in a movie theatre. They want something they’ve never seen before. They want an experience,” Miller said.

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