PARTNERSHIPS | COMMUNITY | PODCAST | FRIENDS
Theaters Celebrate Their First Great Moviegoing Summer Since 2019
Spider-Bucks // Illustration by Kate Walker
Theater owners across America are ecstatic that audiences are finally returning to the movies in droves, making the box office feel like its pre-pandemic self again.
The Big Picture: Six years ago, the narrative seemed to be that theatrical movies were on the way out and streaming would become the primary way audiences watched movies. The industry and culture at large have come a long way since then, with theatrical movies proving to still be the best way to eventize a tentpole and turn indie darlings into major hits.
Behind The Scenes: According to Variety, this is the first year that has felt like a normal year at the movies since 2019.
The summer box office crossed $4 billion for the second time since 2019, thanks to billion-dollar hits like Spider-Man: Brand New Day, The Odyssey, Michael, Toy Story 5, and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.
There have also been surprise indie hits from first-time directors that made way more than anyone expected, including Obsession, Backrooms, and The Drama.
And there have been plenty of other big winners so far this year, including Project Hail Mary, The Devil Wears Prada 2, Wuthering Heights, Scream 7, and Scary Movie.
Final Tally: Theater owners are so optimistic about the rebounding box office because no single title is dominating the conversation. Instead, people are showing up for all different kinds of movies week after week, feeling FOMO if they’re not part of these rare monocultural experiences. It’s why IMAX screenings sell out months in advance and why 26-year-old Curry Barker has become the hottest name in horror.
It’s also why the major theater chains are now rallying around the Paramount/Warner Bros. merger — they don’t want any disruption to the flow of movies, especially after just recovering from thin slates stemming from COVID production delays. No one wants to be cut down at the knees just as they start to sprint.
Coming Soon: With Dune: Part 3 and Avengers: Doomsday anchoring a fall/holiday movie season filled with potential breakout titles, 2026 could become the record year needed to finally end the conversation about the viability of movie theaters.
Together with Wispr Flow
Meeting Notes As Good As The Actual Meeting
You know the meeting went great… but then you read the notes.
The client’s name got spelled three different ways. The follow-up email quotes something nobody actually said. The action items read like a guess because, well, that’s what they are.
Wispr Flow Notetaker fixes all that by actually knowing you.
It runs quietly on your device — no bot awkwardly joining your call.
It pulls real names straight from your calendar invite and lets you fix wrong names across the entire transcript with one click.
It learns how you speak by building a custom dictionary, so the transcript actually sounds like your meeting instead of a garbled guess.
It works on every meeting platform, too — even an impromptu Slack huddle — since it never has to join the call at all.
Everything Wispr Flow Notetaker captures also feeds directly into your AI tools. Ask Claude or ChatGPT about last week’s call, and you’ll get a real, accurate answer — no copy-pasting a transcript required.
The tool is free to try on Mac today, and early testers get a full month of Wispr Pro with unlimited meetings on us.
Today’s email was written by David Vendrell.
Edited by Nick Comney. Polled and Copy-edited by Kait Cunniff.
Published by Darline Salazar.