Fourth weekend of March 2026

As usual, when we get a film in the marketplace that’s working, the holdover weeks make a big difference in the total; and even though we had 4 wide titles last year (A Working Man, The Chosen: Last Supper, Death of a Unicorn, The Woman in the Yard) and only 1 1/4 new wide titles this year, we should be a comfortable amount ahead of the same weekend last year, maybe 15% or 20% because of Project Hail Mary. And with the one two punch of the Mario Brothers and Project Hail Mary next week on Easter Weekend, we have a really good shot at putting a 2 in front of the weekend total, which would make it pretty much a tie with last year. Considering Minecraft and its popcorn throwing teenage boys kicked in $162 million last year, doing the same business this year is another sign of stability in the sector.

Every once in a while I get responses to things I bring up here, and last week when I talked about why the Oscars have become so boring (because we’ve seen and heard it all for 9 weeks already), and moving it up on the calendar might change that, I clearly touched a nerve and some of you weighed in. Of course the bottom line from all of them is very similar to the broken escalator at the AMC Burbank 16 (nothing is going to change); a couple of ideas were raised (including a couple members of the Industrial Awards Complex suggesting that I leave this alone*, and generally when people get upset at you, you’re on to something).

The way this is playing out now, it’s a financial loser for everyone involved but the IAC and the Academy (because of the revenue from the show), it didn’t used to be that way but now that films aren’t in theaters anymore (by the time the awards happen), the ROI is minimal if any at all. When you decide your film is in the awards conversation (or you just take a shot), you know what it’s like financially for you? It’s virtually the same financial effect as losing a lawsuit, and then if you get nominated you lose the appeal too. And when I say ‘everyone’ I mean everyone, everyone takes the financial L but the folks who have made this a cottage industry. And if we can take a step back and look at how we can change this so it isn’t as devastating financially to most everyone involved, moving the show up to early January is probably the best situation for everyone. Here are some thoughts about a couple of aspects that would be better off if the Oscars go first in early January.

• The films and the box-office As we’ve seen over and over again, (for the most part) the better the film is at the box-office the better it is as it makes its way downstream to the other tiers. So we need to look at any way to get that theatrical haul as high as possible, and you don’t have to look any farther than a couple of films that were sizable players in the race this year; Hamnet and Bugonia. Had the Oscars been where the Globes were this year (and we have to make one thing perfectly clear, the Oscars are the only Award that has any pull when it comes to the box-office), those two films could have made only slight alterations in their theatrical release strategy to take advantage of the upgrade in Oscar air date. But there is virtually no release scenario now where a film can reap box-office rewards by winning an Oscar.

• Can we please get back to work? If you’re a nominee, or in the early stages of the race and hope to be a nominee, because of the IAC and all the bullshit events they’ve created (that they convince you are crucial), you can’t work for 4 months (minimum). Your new job is being a nominee and you get to spend 4-6 months not working at a job that pays you because you have to take selfies with voters, and have the same conversation over and over and over again. So the IAC has caused a 4 month time suck of top talent that could be used making more movies, and talent could get paid for work that they are doing for free now. Same for the studios that have to support all this, get the Oscars out of the way early, and then you don’t have so much overhead for all the other awards (that don’t really matter) that follow, and you can go back to doing stuff that has ROI.

• Could we get back to the Best Work Winning? Let’s be serious, the IAC has such a big effect here, a copy of the Oscar should go to the publicist that ran the campaign these days; it’s no longer about the movie, it’s about the campaign. The pitch is ‘we’re going to win you an Oscar’. Oh, hmmmm, based on that pitch, exactly who is winning? If we tighten up that window considerably, we’re closer to a voter’s ‘blink’ response to a film’s quality rather than what they are told is worthy by a publicist. And don’t even get me started on the Best Picture clusterfuck, why are we treating that category differently than every other category? Of course, it’s so we can get 4 or 5 more teams from the IAC jobs for a couple more months for films that have zero shot of winning.

• What about the Globes and the other super early shows? Who cares? They had their day, we need to move on and the Oscars are the big dog, and the big dog can do whatever it wants. They are just content now, and they’ll still be just content if they move behind the Oscars. The Oscars should unleash their inner Helen Kushnick and just say ‘if you wanna do any of those shows that are in front of us, go ahead but you’re not doing the Oscars’. We’ve evolved in the past, the show used to be on Monday but we moved it to Sunday for better media real estate (and Sunday LA traffic instead of Monday LA traffic), this is just another evolutionary step that adjusts to the current times. The Awards started in Hollywood, moved to DTLA, went back to Hollywood and now it’s going back in DTLA**.

But there’s only one group that has a shot at getting anything close to this done, it’s the Studios (and the Corporations behind them) who are writing the checks. It’s Comcast, Disney, Skydance, Amazon, etc that would have to insist on this, because we all know the Academy won’t do a thing. And what’s not lost on me here is that the teams (behind these campaigns) have become very very good at what they do, but it’s a situation where this is less about the film or performance and more about them. There’s the old expression ‘pigs get fat, hogs get slaughtered’, and by cutting these campaigns in half by moving the show date up, it should probably correct the priority here; which should be the movies and the talent (and the ROI).

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as the on time payment on a TSA employee’s mortgage, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Project Hail Mary - Last Friday as the day progressed, it kept looking more and more like a couple of successful (and satisfying) films like Dune Part Two and Oppenheimer. Today, the 2nd Friday has a drop from last week that looks a lot like…..Dune Part Two and Oppenheimer, but just a couple of points better.
Those films both had a 2nd weekend drop in the 43% range, which when you take out the Distribution math tm based gross that didn’t happen on Friday, Saturday or Sunday the week before, the drop was more like 36%. This film had a decent amount of extra previews which only accounted for about 3% of last week’s gross, or about the same amount this is better than Dune Part Two or Oppenheimer today, so figure it’s a wash and this should be down from last week a similar amount in the low 40’s. That should put the weekend in the high 40’s, but with Easter week next week and Good Friday next Friday, this film looks like it’s headed to a very sexy multiple.

Hoppers - Last Friday there were a lot of kids out of school and today there’s only about half of what was out last week, so today is down a decent amount. However, we should see a bigger bounce than last week tomorrow, and this still should end up down only another 35% for a weekend of about 11.

They Will Kill You - Every once in a while you have a film that just gets unlucky, and because of some aspects that aren’t really in its control, it’s soft today. They got unlucky because Ready or Not 2 Here I Come opened last week and as much as WB tried to separate this, the core idea is just so close and it struggled to get any attention. This was originally opening a week before Ready or Not, but they moved up in front and it was so close to the release date, there was nothing they could have done. Looks like a weekend of about $6 million.

Dhurandhar: The Revenge - Normally I don’t have to write anything about the Bollywood films on the 2nd weekend, because they run through their audience pretty quickly, but this one is holding considerably better than we’ve seen before. Looks down about 45% for a weekend in the mid 5’s.

Forbidden Fruits - Went 1500 runs and it’s pretty good where there’s an audience that has Letterboxd bookmarked on their browser, but it falls off really fast once you get away from those theaters. Looks like a weekend of $1.5 million or so.

The AI Doc: Or how I became an Apocaloptimist - Went about 800 runs and it’s got a handful of fair grosses in Tech and Government hubs, but it’s super soft everywhere else. Figure maybe $300k or so for the weekend.

• or experience a terrible death

** fingers crossed that with 3000 more seats, the Academy can double the ‘lottery’ seats for the General Membership from 12 to 24 seats……