What Are The Five Biggest Summers Ever At The Domestic Box Office?

If these musically inclined teenagers are to be believed, it is indeed "summertime"

Blake Shelton's a terrible musician. 

Christ, he's just awful. 

If you hate your ears and want to eradicate your hearing, may I suggest you pop in "Boys 'Round Here" and listen to his rapping. By the third time he utters "chew tobacco, chew tobacco, spit", you'll want to claw your own eyes out even though music isn't a visual medium. However, credit where credit is due, this stain on music did kick off his career with a genuinely good tune. His first single, "Austin," is a great little narrative song that spins a moving web of a woman calling up her ex-lover's answering machine, which tells callers, "P.S. if this is Austin/I still love you." 

Shelton's modern works have been hillbily kafabe aimed at the eardrums of upper-class people. "Austin" demonstrates a level of emotional vulnerability, not to mention narratively satisfying lyrics, that his subsequent songs haven't come close to matching. It's always hard to recapture the magic of your greatest exploits. 

Just ask the summer box office. While the weaker summer box office hauls of the 2020s haven't been as bad as Shelton's "Hell Right" or "Honey Bee," they've also struggled to live up to the biggest summer box office grosses in history. These particular summers are the "Austin's" that seasons like summer 2026 are always trying to emulate. But what are these summer domestic box office hauls (which consist of money made from May 1 to Labor Day in a given year) that reign supreme? What have been the biggest summers in history at the domestic box office? Journey with me and let's explore the five biggest summer moviegoing seasons at the domestic box office. Who knows, maybe some further country music commentary will even creep its way into the proceedings.

5. 2011 ($4.402 billion)

2011 was a rough year for the domestic box office. The first few months of the year were especially dire, as that year's January and February lacked the early breakout hits that lifted those same months in 2009 and 2010. Gone were Taken, Valentine's Day, and The Book of Eli, in their place were The Roommate, The Rite, and Hall Pass. Reuters would later dub 2011 "a deadly year" in terms of its box office performance, which makes it all the more surprising to remember that summer 2011 was the fifth biggest summer ever at the box office. 

You can chalk that feat up to Hollywood just cramming the season full of weekly massive tentpoles. No wonder Jon Favreau (director of that summer's Cowboys & Aliens) called this scheduling "a bloodbath", as titles like Transformers: Dark of the Moon, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2, and Captain America: The First Avenger all opened within a single four-week span. To boot, August, normally a month Hollywood usually abandons, was hopping thanks to hits like Rise of the Planet of the Apes and The Help. It's a bit surprising people found enough time between endless re-listens of "Dirt Road Anthem," "Take a Back Road," and "Old Alabama" to check out so many movies in theaters that summer. However, that's just what happened with summer 2011's jam-packed slate. If you want an illustration of how more major theatrical releases always help the marketplace, just look at how much better summer 2011 performed compared to the year's first three, utterly empty few months.

4. 2018 ($4.412 billion)

A year before Florida Georgia Line's penultimate album unfurled onto store shelves, the summer 2018 box office was thriving. Avengers: Infinity War technically began its historic run a week before summer 2018 began, which means that this summer's proper victor was Incredibles 2 (which temporarily became the biggest animated movie ever domestically). New Jurassic World, Deadpool, Mission: Impossible, and Hotel Transylvania adventures also littered the season and brought in plenty of moolah. This was yet another season demonstrating that a properly lucrative summer box office landscape cannot thrive on May and June blockbusters alone. August 2018 brought plenty of major moneymakers to the table, including Crazy Rich Asians, The Meg, and even Christopher Robin.

Here's an eerie portrait of how much Disney was now dominating the cinematic landscape circa. 2018: ten years earlier, in summer 2008, the Mouse House only released two of the season's 12 biggest movies. A decade later, that number had doubled to four and one other film amongst summer 2018's top 12 (Deadpool 2) came from a studio Disney was in the process of buying. That corporate domination has now ballooned to also include Paramount potentially gobbling up Warner Bros. and beloved studios like 20th Century Fox being shells of their former selves. Back in summer 2018, A.K.A. the summer of Gotti, the box office vibes were as upbeat as the tone in the George Jones song "Finally Friday." "Let the good times roll," as Jones once crooned, presumably before he sat down to watch Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again.

3. 2015 ($4.476 billion)

Dinosaurs ruled the planet millions of years ago. For the summer of 2015, though, these prehistoric beasties were also on top once more. Jurassic World was by far the biggest movie of the summer with $647.37 million. Already, one can see Hollywood's consolidation and reliance on fewer, bigger titles taking place this season. Summer 2015 only produced 12 movies that grossed $100+ million domestically, compared to 15 in 2009 and a whopping 17 in 2008. The top films were the ones picking up a lot of the slack, which included four mega-titles making $300+ million each domestically. Rather than unleashing many movies making $100-120 million each, Hollywood was pinning more and more of its hopes on titles cracking $200+ million a piece.

As priorities shifted, though, the raw summertime grosses remained hearty. Non-sequels even made up five of this summer's 12 biggest movies, including Inside Out and Straight Outta Compton. This massive summer proved integral to making 2015 the first year in history to hit $11+ billion at the annual domestic box office. Why, the movies were almost as popular this summer as Craig Morgan's "Redneck Yacht Club." I've never thought about it before, but what a class-based nightmare that social gathering would be. Lots of white people with strong opinions on people of color and gays, all insisting they're simple country folk while rocking enough money to own a yacht. Just throw me into the jaws of the Indominus Rex right now. Anyway, moving all of our brains over to more cheerful waters, summer 2015, even with a more limited slate of new movies, still managed to hit some major financial highs. 

At the time, 2015 even delivered the second biggest summer box office haul ever, though it would soon relinquish that title to...

2. 2016 ($4.491 billion)

Sometime in the late 1960s, Merle Haggard put pen to paper (or fingertips to keyboard) and translated his own experiences in prison into the song "Mama Tried." A tune full of lamenting, it was infused with the kind of regret Hollywood was NOT feeling as summer 2016 was winding down.  Unfortunately, this was a summer that seemed to suggest the studios' shifting towards only tentpole sequels all the time could produce incredibly lucrative results. Captain America: Civil War and Suicide Squad were the two biggest live-action movies of the summer, and each grossed $300+ million domestically. Finding Dory was the season's champ and finally dethroned Shrek 2 after 12 years as the biggest animated movie ever in North America with its $486 million domestic cume. The Secret Life of Pets was the third biggest title of the season with $368.6 milion. 

In a startling reflection of how the divie between the "haves" and "have nots" was growing, Jason Bourne rounded out the top five that summer with "only" $162.43 million. Just six years earlier, in summer 2010, the fifth biggest movie of the summer (Despicable Me) cracked $250+ million domestically. Hollywood executives thought relying on fewer and fewer reliable moneymakers was a dream come true...but what happens when those "moneymaker" franchises start producing bombs like The Marvels and The Flash? That and the summer's deluge of bloated box office bombs producing more massive money-losers than a typical summer season (howdy Independence Day: Resurgence, Alice Through the Looking Glass, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Out of the Shadows, Ben-Hur, and The BFG) should've given the studios some perspective that a $180+ million budget isn't enough to produce an automatic hit.

Still, experiencing the second biggest summer ever domestically was the kind of event that clouded judgment. The season's massive box office haul, which was also aided by original comedy hits like Central Intelligence and Bad Moms, signaled a victory of sorts for Hollywood's new cinema priorities. It also suggested that the big screen still held plenty of appeal even as Netflix was beginning to ramp up its original television offerings (don't forget, Stranger Things premiered this summer). No wonder movie theater owners and studio executives weren't channeling the mood of Merle Haggard writing "Mama Tried."

1. 2013 ($4.754 billion)

I don't think the world will ever see a summer moviegoing season as big as summer 2013. For one thing, this season's $4.754 billion haul is just so strikingly ahead of all other seasons (it's $263 million higher than summer 2016, the second biggest summer ever in raw dollars). 2019, the last "normal" before COVID wrecked shop, made $430 million less than this season*. It's just going to be hard to recreate the circumstances that made summer 2013 so immensely powerful, including the scheduling that delivered one mega-hit after another on a weekly basis. If Jon Favreau thought summer 2011 was packed, hoo boy, summer 2013 was a whirlwind. Iron Man 3, The Great Gatsby, Star Trek Into Darkness, The Hangover: Part III, and Fast & Furious 6 alone all dropped within the first four weeks of May 2013. That was the summer kick-off!

Iron Man 3 (the only movie of the summer to make $400+ million domestically) was easily the season's victor, but the wealth was surprisingly spread out all across this entire moviegoing landscape. A whopping 19 summer 2013 movies cracked $100+ million domestically, nine of which were either completely original works or non-sequels based on source material that had never been adapted into movies before. Sure, new Iron Man, Superman, and Despicable Me movies reigned supreme this season. However, The Heat and The Conjuring outgrossing The Lone Ranger and The Smurfs 2 made it clear that ideas that resonate with viewers are more important than familiar brand names and excessive scope.

The wide array of projects and genres available on the big screen fueled summer 2013 to massive historic box office heights. Given that the major studios are hesitant to release movies like This Is The End or The Heat these days, it's doubtful summer 2013's historic box office haul can ever be replicated. Making $4.7 billion in a single summer happens when tons of new movies are in play, not just Iron Man 3 and Star Trek Into Darkness. Even Blue Sky's Epic (whose $107.45 million 2013 gross would be $152.31 million in 2026 dollars) is the kind of box office performer the marketplace needs more of now (it'd be a shame if Epic's animation studio got destroyed by a major conglomerate).

I've sometimes said 2014 was the final year for a certain era of Hollywood (The Hollywood Reporter recently said something similar, albeit in relation to TV ratings). Last year without Netflix making and distributing original movies. The final year (until the end of the decade) without an MCU movie grossing $800+ million worldwide. The final year without a new annual Star Wars movie until 2020. Lots of massive changes were on the horizon for Hollywood that would really arrive in 2015. Summer 2013, then, was, in hindsight, a bit of a "one last big bash" before the status quo's upending. Comedies were still massive. Original films made up nearly half of summer 2013's $100+ million grossers. Major new releases dropped nearly every week. Those elements would quickly become scarcer, but in summer 2013, they felt like an inherent part of America's cinematic tapestry.

No wonder summer 2013, the summer box office's equivalent to "Austin," was so massive in raw box office numbers that it doesn't feel like any subsequent summer moviegoing season will ever dethrone it. Summer 2026 is off to a rollicking start thanks to The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Michael, but even this season will need a miracle to come anywhere close to $4.7 billion. It's hard to top your highest of highs. Just ask Blake Shelton. Hey, at least none of the subsequent summer box office hauls have been as embarrassing as "Boys 'Round Here."

* = If Avengers: Endgame had stuck to its original May 3, 2019 release date and grossed the $474 million it made in April 2019 in summer 2019 instead, that alone would've been enough to make summer 2019 the biggest summer ever.