Third weekend of February 2026
It looks like there’s some resonance from the films that opened last weekend (more on that below), and with comparable gross coming in from the new films this year vs last year (The Monkey, Unbreakable Boy), those stronger holdovers should get us even with the same weekend last year; when Captain America did what Marvels do in the 2nd week and dropped 68%. The next couple of weeks after that should be substantially ahead of last year, and we should be able to add to the cushion over last year that started in January.
As the release schedule gets back to normal, and we have 3, 4 or 5 new wide releases each week, a few of those movies each week are films where you need to find a place to release a movie and ‘just get through it’. Once a movie gets through the insane process it takes to get to green light (and as a great example of that, we’re seeing films with more vanity cards from the financiers on the front of the film than the number of trailers at an AMC Theater, so the financing of a movie alone is a big puzzle), and once you get through the vetting process before you shoot the film, you can still end up with a film that wasn’t what you thought it would be before you started. Or you assemble all the elements for a film, and then the world the film has to deal with when it’s done is not what it was when you were assembling the film. This element gets extra complicated when you’re getting ready to start a movie and the world starts changing during prep, and you have the tough conversation about ’should we pull the plug here or are we too pregnant with this film?’
We’ve got a couple of films this week that fit into those categories (I’ll address them individually below), and it’s the reality of today’s Theatrical sector, sometimes you just end up with limited theatricality. There used to be days where if a film had problematic elements either quality wise or marketing wise, you could still bludgeon them into doing a few dollars with a decent spend. But the floor has descended significantly because of the insane competition for consumers these days, and to spend good money after bad just doesn’t happen anymore. This sector is hard.
It seems as if the conversation in the press regarding the WBD sale has shifted from a potential streaming monopoly, to how it would affect the Theatrical sector. Cinemark was the latest to weigh in and call out Netflix’s newly found Theatrical religion as bullshit. But since this deal has so many aspects that could make either bid sink or swim, if Netflix loses it because of this particular aspect, it’s an ‘own goal’ and they brought it on themselves.
Ever since they’ve started making films for their platform, they’ve gone out of their way to tell the world ‘yes we make movies, but we really prefer for you to watch them on our platform’. And over the years, as they’ve bought their way into the Oscar race they’ve sat there with a ‘Cat that ate the Canary’ smile on their faces (maybe) thinking to themselves ’suckers’, and they thought they had this all figured out. If they’ve been thinking about this acquisition for a while, there have been opportunities recently that would have paid off now, but for some reason they didn’t take advantage of. They had a really nice Theatrical release in 2022 with Glass Onion; but on Wake Up Dead Man they went back to the same minfort* strategy they do with all their films that have a ’theatrical release’, they spent no money and pretended it didn’t happen. Same with the Theatrical release on K-Pop Demon Hunters, where they had a really eye opening Theatrical weekend but pretended like it didn’t happen and refused to report the grosses. But the main error was back on that Friday at the beginning of December when they won the initial bidding, and they punted the salad with the press release. They really needed to say ‘we’ve been looking at this sector and we need to be a part of it, so we feel that (rather than building it) we’re going to buy one of the best companies that already does it’. But they didn’t and now they’re struggling to get anyone to believe that they’ve found Theatrical religion; so Cinemark has a point because they’ve seen what Netflix does up close.
Anyway, with the same expected accuracy and efficacy of Kid Rock’s bench press routine, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Wuthering Heights - The numbers look pretty good today; but because this got knocked around last week (the critics were so so on it), I took a look back at Emerald Fennell’s last movie, Saltburn. The exits are almost identical (just okay) and although the Rotten Tomatoes score is up in the 70’s now, according to my notes it was in the mid 60’s on opening weekend for Saltburn and Wuthering Heights was in the low 60’s last weekend (it’s’ at 59% now). And Saltburn became a film that got talked about and talked about and ended up with a cume multiple off its opening (wide) weekend of 6.8. So the Director here has a history of divisive exits, but those love it/hate it exits also seem to have a history of resonance at the box-office. Just like all the films from last weekend, this is going to look worse than it actually is this weekend, because it’s coming off a Saturday Valentine’s Day and a Sunday with a Monday Holiday, so whatever it drops this weekend you can probably add 15 points to the drop if this was an apples to apples weekend. Looks down 55% or so for a weekend in the low/mid teens.
GOAT - This was the film last weekend that just kept going and going, fueled by excellent exits; it’s always great to have good movies when your marketing department is struggling. It’s pretty good again today and it’s possible this could win the weekend, so figure it’s down the same 55% as Wuthering for a weekend in the low/mid teens.
I Can Only Imagine 2 - The latest film from Kingdom Stories, the company that has A+ Cinemascore after A+ Cinemascore, but also has a lot of Rotten Tomatoes scores for the same movies in the mid 40’s. Which tells you everything you need to know about the current state of Cinema Critics, they are totally out of touch with any sort of normal consumer. It’s more of the same here, the exits are excellent and the critics (there’s no score yet) all seem completely bored with the movie. The grosses are good though, and it’s best where you think it should be best (the red states), and it looks like a solid weeknd around $10 million.
How to Make a Killing - This loose remake of the beloved (in the UK) 1949 Ealing Studios film Kind Hearts and Coronets from StudioCanal (through A24) has grosses today that I would call ‘base A24’. Looking at the theaters that are at the top of the sheet, it’s all the theaters that we normally see on a film that A24 does well in; especially when the film is one of their weird little titles that they don’t spend a lot of money on, but appeal to their specific audience. As I spoke about above, sometimes you end up with a film that doesn’t quite turn out as good as you thought it would be, so there are elements that tell a studio ‘maybe just get through this’. If you go look at the review summaries on Rotten Tomatoes (currently at 47%) you’ll see a lot of 2 star reviews that laud Glen Powell for bringing his ‘movie star charm’, but they all pretty much say the movie collapses on itself in the 2nd half. So they ended up with a movie that’s just okay. But then there’s the marketing piece and sometimes you can have a 2 star movie that has enough of a marketing hook and you can convince consumers to come. In this case, a lot happened from the time this film was gestating at StudioCanal and today. Since the film is about killing everyone between the lead character and a fortune, the world has become a much nastier place in the last year or so, and it’s a different world than it was when this started shooting; so crafting a tone in the materials here to make it seem light and entertaining is tough. But something else happened between the time this package was put together and now, Saltburn happened, and it’s essentially the same movie. Even though Saltburn didn’t do a ton of business, it was a water Kombucha cooler movie (it was Gen X) and one of the barriers would have been ’this is just a Saltburn wanna be’. So that’s why this is at base A24’, and it was probably a smart play (all things considered). Looks like what a base A24 film would do, about $3 million on 1600 screens.
Epic: Elvis Presley in Concert - This Baz Luhrman presented concert Doc based on footage found in a Kansas Salt mine, went 325 theaters, mostly in IMAX and the numbers are really good in the Red States. Looks like it’s going to get to about $2 million for the weekend.
Psycho Killer - Speaking of films that a studio just needs to get through, Disney/20th needed to find a place for this Regency film that’s been done for 3 years. Similar to what A24 is doing this week, it’s only on 1100 screens and it looks like it’s headed to $1.2 million or so.
*minimum effort