A24 just did something no independent distributor has ever done. The studio behind Everything Everywhere All at Once finished the 2026 summer movie season with a bigger share of the domestic box office than Warner Bros. and Paramount, according to data reported by The Hollywood Reporter.
The final tallies: A24 took 5.5 percent of the summer domestic box office, ahead of Warner Bros. at 5 percent and Paramount at 4.5 percent. It is the first time an indie distributor has ended a summer ahead of a Big Five studio.
Per Deadline’s summer rankings, A24 grossed about $244 million domestically between May 1 and September 7, topping Warner Bros. ($239.3 million) and Paramount ($219.8 million). Universal led the season with $1.23 billion, followed by Disney at $1.034 billion and Sony at $1 billion, with Lionsgate slotting in at $270 million. The summer as a whole set an all-time domestic record of $4.76 billion.
One movie did most of the heavy lifting. Backrooms, directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons and based on his viral web series about endless liminal spaces, was made for just $10 million. It opened to $81 million domestically, A24’s biggest opening weekend ever, and has since crossed $400 million worldwide to become the studio’s highest-grossing release of all time.
The flip side is how far the majors fell. Warner Bros. dropped 76 percent from summer 2025, when Superman, Weapons and F1 powered it to a second-place finish. Paramount never found a breakout, with Scream 7 its top summer performer at nearly $122 million domestic.
The summer also belonged to another micro-budget breakout: Obsession, the $750,000 horror film from 26-year-old Curry Barker, earned $263.4 million domestic this summer and has passed $516 million worldwide.