From Olympus to Arrakis—2026 is The Year of Zendaya
Is there anything Zendaya can’t do? A few weeks ago, the lithe 30-year-old actress geeked out at an Ariana Grande concert, then strolled the catwalk at a Louis Vuitton fashion show in Paris. Before that, she competed on Dancing with the Stars, starred in a couple of Disney series, did her own trapeze stunts in The Greatest Showman, won two Emmys as a drug-addicted high schooler in Euphoria, and played tennis on a near-professional level in 2024 sports drama Challengers.
Also, this year, Zendaya is on track to appear in $5 billion worth of movies.
That box office milestone, now standing at $4.4 billion with Dune: Part Three still to come, rests largely on the Oakland-born entertainer’s role in two of the summer’s biggest blockbusters. She’s literally a Greek goddess in The Odyssey, and in Spider-Man: Brand New Day, Zendaya plays the superhero’s memory-wiped girlfriend. Not that she depends on spectacle to frame her performances. Last spring, Zendaya delivered on a smaller scale opposite Robert Pattinson in the domestic two-hander The Drama. And in December, she’ll cap off the year by reprising Chani, the fierce desert rebel, when Dune: Part Three hits theaters.
Clearly, the camera likes her and so do audiences. Here’s our 2026 timeline honoring Zendaya’s multi-billion-dollar year at the movies;
Emma Harwood in The Drama / April 3
Zendaya plays a tightly wound Boston editor whose picture-perfect romance with British fiancé Charlie (Robert Pattinson) goes downhill after they play a drunken game of “What’s the Worst Thing You’ve Ever Done”? (Spoiler alert: do not try this at home). The movie was written and directed by Norwegian filmmaker Kristoffer Borgli (Dream Scenario), who excels at the type of emotionally fraught psychodrama favored by Nordic auteurs.
To usher Zendaya into his wheelhouse, Borgli showed her Lars Von Trier’s gloomy masterpiece Melancholia as well as Paul Mazursky’s dark 1969 comedy Bob & Carol Ted & Alice. Zendaya said in a statement that she understood and embraced her character’s isolation. “Emma is someone who is desperately seeking to belong and fit in — she wants to be part of Charlie’s life. From childhood, she’s been somebody who never quite found her tribe or community, instead finding that in belonging in Charlie and his friend group.”
The fourth-highest-grossing film in A24’s catalog, The Drama boasts merch sales that suggest a rabid fan base.
Sold out: Eight different styles of Drama-themed T-shirts quoting lines like “To Be Loved Is To Be Known.” Still in stock: buyer-beware packets of playing cards modeled on the movie’s catastrophic parlor game.
Box office: $132 million
Athena in The Odyssey / July 17
How do you play a goddess? Zendaya found her way into Athena, the Greek goddess of wisdom, warfare, and handicrafts, by thinking about her character as a kind of spiritual advisor to Matt Damon’s anguished hero Odysseus. “I really connected with the emotional component of it,” Zendaya said in a statement. “Athena becomes a reflection of the moral struggle that Odysseus is having within himself. You realize that the manifestation of this goddess is a kind of tough love, guiding him and bringing him through his journey.”
On her first day of shooting in Morocco, Zendaya entered Chris Nolan-level world-building for the first time when she witnessed the fictional sack of Troy on a huge set. “I didn’t have to do much acting because I felt I had stepped into Troy,” she recalled. “It was exhilarating and almost felt like a dream. It was cold and raining, but I think with the adrenaline, I didn’t feel it. Everybody kept asking me, ‘Do you want a jacket?’ I was so fired up I forgot it was cold.”
Box office: $1.76 billion
MJ in Spider-Man: Brand New Day / July 31
Zendaya had big sneakers to fill when she assumed the role of Peter Parker’s formidable girlfriend MJ. After all, Kirsten Dunst as Mary Jane Watson in the 2002-2007 trilogy co-created one of filmdom’s most romantic scenes when Toby Maguire’s version of Spider-Man hung upside down from a thread to kiss the feisty love of his life. But Zendaya more than held her own in Homecoming, Far from Home and No Way Home, channeling her natural buoyancy to play Peter Parker’s best friend and love interest. The chemistry with star Tom Holland has been palpable, on screen and off. Earlier this year, Zendaya and Holland got married in a secret wedding, and their relationship boosted Brand New Day’s popularity, according to a recent New York Times essay, because “people love its leads.”
Spider-Man screenwriters Chris McKenna and Erik Sommers knew exactly how to manage audience expectations for Brand New Day. At the end of No Way Home, Dr. Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch) cast a spell that made everyone forget Peter Parker, so MJ has no idea who he is when they meet at a party.
Sommers told The Credits, “You want to see those reunions, but how soon do you want to see them? Peter Parker and MJ are on the rooftop where she says she remembers him – and this is obviously a spoiler – but it’s not real. Let’s say MJ really did remember Spider-Man at that point, and they go right back to where they were in the previous movie? I don’t think people would have been satisfied. I know we wouldn’t have been. McKenna adds, “That rooftop scene was really fun because it allowed us to go to the audience, ‘Oh, this is what you want, this is what Peter wants,’ and then pull the rug out. Later on, when he actually has the honest scene with the real MJ, it goes about as well as you would expect. She tells him what we all don’t want her to say and what we’ve all probably been told at a certain point in our lives, which is ‘I don’t feel that way about you.'”
Besides spurring the protagonist’s growth, MJ herself matured over the years. Once a bright-eyed high schooler, she’s now a skeptical MIT graduate with a degree in astrophysics. The actress’ personal interest in the time-space continuum shines through in her Interstellar-themed home movie shown on The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon.
Box office: $2.5 billion
Chani in Dune: Part Three / Dec. 18
Zendaya made the most of her limited seven-minute screen time in director Denis Villeneuve’s first Dune movie, playing the tough Fremen warrior who handed hero/anti-hero Paul Atreides (Timothée Chalamet) a desperately needed dagger in the movie’s climactic battle scene. In Dune: Part Two, she educated Paul in the ways of her desolate Arrakis planet and challenged him to do better. For the third installment of the Frank Herbert-authored sci-fi saga, Zendaya can be expected to finally move front and center, according to Villeneuve. At Cinema-Con in April, the filmmaker promised plenty of IMAX-scaled carnage, but added, “The heartbeat of the film is the love story between Chani and Paul. “
Box office: To be determined. Dune: Part Two earned $715 million.
Featured image: L to R: Matt Damon is Odysseus and Zendaya is Athena in THE ODYSSEY, written, produced, and directed by Christopher Nolan; Caption: ZENDAYA as Chani in Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures’ action adventure “DUNE: PART THREE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release. Photo Credit: Photo Courtesy Warner Bros. Pictures; MJ (Zendaya) swings through the city with Spider-Man in Columbia Pictures SPIDER-MAN™: BRAND NEW DAY. Photo by: Jay Maidment; Robert Pattinson and Zendaya in “The Drama.” Courtesy A24
