Warner Bros.’ Brutal Box Office Drought Stretches On as the Studio’s Once-Unstoppable Hot Streak Collapses

Not long ago, Warner Bros. was the most feared name at the multiplex. The studio was racking up No. 1 openings, awards hardware and record-setting streaks, and it looked like a model for how a legacy studio could win. That is why the Warner Bros. box office drought of 2026 feels so jarring, and it has now stretched past a full year.

Back in September 2025, ‘The Conjuring: Last Rites’ opened to $83 million and became the studio’s seventh film in a row to debut above $40 million, a first for any studio. It went on to earn $499.3 million worldwide on a $55 million budget, and $177.8 million of that came from North America. The studio also had ‘One Battle After Another’ and ‘Sinners’ on its side, two of the big winners at this year’s Oscars.

Now the picture is very different. Warner Bros. has gone 13 consecutive months without a new film reaching $100 million at the domestic box office, or even $90 million. The last one to do it was ‘The Conjuring: Last Rites,’ back in September 2025.

The streak had hit 12 months at the start of October, when observers noted that the horror sequel might be the studio’s last $100 million domestic grosser for a while. A month later, nothing has changed. According to Variety, no 2026 Warner Bros. release has crossed that mark, and the studio’s share of the domestic market has fallen from 21% in 2025 to just 6%.

What makes the drought striking is the market around it. Domestic box office revenue reached about $7.5 billion by mid-September, up 19.2% from the same point in 2025, and the summer was described as the best on record. In other words, audiences are showing up, just not for Warner Bros.

Meanwhile, Universal’s ‘The Odyssey’ has become the studio’s highest-grossing film ever, and Sony’s ‘Resident Evil’ reboot has topped $400 million worldwide. The gap between the winners and Warner Bros. has rarely looked wider.

The studio’s year has been a string of costly disappointments. ‘The Bride!’ collapsed with $24 million worldwide against a $90 million budget, a loss estimated near $100 million. DC’s ‘Supergirl’ earned $126 million globally against a $170 million budget, and Variety estimates it will lose $80 million.

‘Practical Magic 2’ opened at No. 1 with $30 million, but ran out of steam at about $68.5 million domestically and $105.7 million worldwide against a $75 million budget. Reports differ on whether it lost money, with one source close to the film disputing the loss. ‘The End of Oak Street’ topped out around $60 million domestically, and ‘Wuthering Heights’ was the biggest winner, with estimated net gains of $40 million.

Tom Cruise’s ‘Digger’ was supposed to offer a lifeline. Directed by Alejandro G. Iñárritu, it opened October 2 against tracking that suggested a $12 million to $15 million launch, and it ended up as one of the biggest write-offs of the year. Reported budgets range from about $125 million to $180 million, with nearly $100 million more spent on marketing.

Reports claim the studio’s 2026 slate could lose more than $800 million overall. The new corporate owners at Paramount Skydance, who have been described as critical of the spending, took control after ‘Digger,’ which was the final Warner Bros. release before the acquisition closed.

All eyes now turn to the end of the year. ‘The Cat in the Hat’ arrives on November 6, but the real hope is ‘Dune: Part Three,’ Denis Villeneuve’s trilogy closer, which opens December 18 and has secured IMAX screens for its opening weekend. It will go head-to-head with Marvel’s ‘Avengers: Doomsday’ on the same day, which makes the stakes enormous.

Looking further ahead, the 2027 lineup includes ‘Man of Tomorrow,’ ‘Godzilla x Kong: Supernova,’ ‘The Lord of the Rings: The Hunt for Gollum’ and a new Ocean’s prequel. Paramount Skydance’s David Ellison has promised to grow the combined slates to about 30 theatrical releases a year, so the strategy is likely to change. Whether one film, even one as big as ‘Dune: Part Three,’ can reverse a year this rough is an open question.

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