MLK weekend 2026
We’ve got about the same gross from new films this weekend as we had on the same weekend last year (One of Them Days, Wolf Man), but as we’ve been seeing the last couple of weeks, our quiver of holdover films should propel us to another 10% or so surplus on last year’s MLK weekend. Some nice milestones this weekend too from the Christmas movies; The Housemaid will pass $100 million domestic gross today (with a lot left in the tank), and Marty Supreme should pass Everything Everywhere All at Once tomorrow as A24 biggest domestic gross of all time. The next couple of weeks look better or the same as 2025 as well, so we should continue to build up a surplus off last year.
As the nomination voting concludes today for the Oscars*, I always keep coming back to one issue, where is the (Financial) ROI from all the resources allocated to Awards season? By this time of year, most of the films in play for awards have migrated to TV and few still have a strong theatrical presence. This year we have a couple of films to keep an eye on, because as we keep seeing data that helps us understand how to wring every bit of the higher revenue per viewer that theatrical generates (before discounting the content on lower priced tiers). So films like Marty Supreme and Hamnet still have a strong theatrical presence (with only PVOD, which because of the high price, doesn’t seem to effect theatrical much), but where the noms next week will probably have more of an influence on Marty Supreme getting to $100 million, it’s already had a good run.
But Hamnet is a different situation and the various release tiers here are pretty old school, and Focus has timed those tiers to take advantage of the Awards Season, and we haven’t seen a film released this way in a while. The template lately for films like this is to get whatever you can get from the arty theaters and the consumers who love them over the holidays, and then toss it on a platform by the time the noms come out. But we keep seeing data that questions how fast you need to get to the platform tier, and maybe we should pump the brakes on ’sooner is better’ in a situation like this (because of the awards), and it’s worth monitoring. Right now Hamnet has a little over $13 million as it’s domestic cume, and it will be interesting to see what that looks like 5 or 6 weeks from now. Since it’s clear that the cache of a theatrical release pays off once you hit the bargain table tiers of streaming, having a film like Hamnet in theaters when we’re in the nomination window could be that little push that tips this to non art film audiences. If that can happen, it should trickle down to the home viewership once it gets to the platform and it’s a win win. It’s weird to call what we used to do ‘innovative’, but this is pretty innovative, and this is a film to keep an eye on.
Clearly the New York Times piece on what Netflix will do with WB is really late, it should have happened the same day they won the initial (or whatever round that was) bidding last month**. But as much as the timing will probably lead to skepticism, it makes complete sense. Now that they’ve sewed up a renewal deal with Sony, adding WB’s slate to their platform makes their movie division irrelevant (at least in its current form). They’ve seen the data from the viewership of Sony’s theatrical movies on their platform and compared it to the home grown films they made, and having the WB titles is a big win for them. Why would they want more of the movies subscribers only watch for a weekend (if that) by cutting windows on the WB slate? They’re really good at TV, but the movie division always felt like they were buying a seat a the theatrical table; and now they don’t have to spend ridiculous money in both production and awards campaigns for their movies to scream to the world ‘we’re theatrical movies, we swear!’, because they are legitimate theatrical movies. I wouldn’t be surprised if they went back to where they started before they made 9 figure budget movies, and made inexpensive rom coms and teen skewing movies, because they were really good at it and the financials make sense for straight to streaming. However, since this deal probably won’t close until well into 2030, why worry about that now?
Anyway, with the same accuracy as me saying ‘I won a Super Bowl’ because a friend left his Super Bowl ring on my kitchen counter one night, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
28 Years Later: The Bone Temple - Sony’s year of mediocrity from 2025 continues to 2026. The idea of making a 2nd (or 4th) film from this IP seems like a good idea back to back with 28 Years Later, and with the nice opening (based on one of the best trailers of last year) last June for 28 Years Later, you would think that green lighting this film in advance would be a smart move. But it turns out the audience didn’t love last year’s film, so even though this film seems to have much better playability, there’s a little bit of a ‘who asked for this?’ stench here. The grosses are very NY/LA and it’s not great in the middle of the country. Right now this looks like mid teens in 3 and high teens in 4, and there’s a chance Avatar still wins the weekend. Sony should be fine later in the year, they’ve got some pretty good films and big IP’s coming so they should get out of the slump very soon.
Avatar: Fire and Ash - Looks down about 35% for a 3 day in the mid teens and a 4 day in the high teens.
The core holdovers from Christmas all look pretty solid today, figure they all drop between 20% and 30% for the 3 day, but Marty Supreme looks a little better than the rest right now. And once again this weekend, Zootopia 2 ain’t going away anytime soon.
Hamnet - Added 500 runs today (and I would guess they add more next week after the noms), and it’s very promising. What’s especially encouraging is that the runs from last week are pretty much all up today from last Friday by an average of about 20%. The runs they added are still best where it’s a theater that plays a little upscale, but the grosses don’t hold up too bad as you get farther out into the more commercial theaters. This has a shot at getting to $1 million over the 3 days and $1.2 or so for the 4 days.
Dead Man’s Wire - Expanded to 1100 theaters and it’s not good, not a lot going on here. Looks like about $800k for 3 and about $1 million for 4.
Charlie the Wonderdog - Went 1100 runs and since there are no kids out of school today, it’s really bad. Might pop back up tomorrow and might get to $700k for 3 and $900k for 4.
Night Patrol - Went 800 theaters and it’s a little worse than bad. Maybe $100k for the 3 day and $120k for the 4 day.
Private Life - Went exclusive in 5 runs in LA and NY, and it’s fair in the Lincoln Sq, but pretty soft at the Angelika, the Grove and Burbank. Maybe a psa of about $10k for 3, $12k for 4.
*And my email inbox has gone blissfully quiet without a slew of FYC emails.
** I still think it’s because they didn’t think they would win.