Third weekend of May 2026
We should have one more weekend of surplus over last year before we take a step back for a couple of weeks, but unquestionably the big story that’s pulled us through the last couple of weeks is Michael. Last Friday, I said that there wasn’t much of a battle for 1st place between The Devil Wears Prada 2 and Mortal Kombat II, and it wasn’t going to be close. But I cut a line that followed it up with ‘because of what’s going to happen Sunday, Mortal Kombat isn’t really playing for first, it’s actually battling for 2nd place with Michael’ (and it ended up being neck and neck), because there’s one aspect that’s unique to Mother’s Day weekend. The moviegoing aspect of Mother’s Day is a little downscale and ethnic, and if you look at weekend where there is no obvious choice for the target demo (like we saw last year where The Accountant 2, Sinners and Shadow Force were the films that dropped the least from Saturday, but still dropped), it shows you what demos Mother’s Day at the movies is a default activity for. So it was interesting to me that no one seemed to figure that Michael was going to have a really good Mother’s Day (everyone seemed to have it dropping like a normal or maybe a little better than normal Sunday), and along with Sheep Detective and Prada, it was one of the three films that had a better Mother’s Day than Saturday. But Michael (and Prada) are going to keep us in the game this weekend, and even though we’ve got nothing new this weekend that’s going to match the weekend that Final Destination: Bloodlines generated last year, having those satisfying holdovers should be enough to match last year.
As I’ve talked about the last couple of weeks, we are coming into a buzzsaw of box-office success from last year’s record breaking Memorial Day Weekend, which should reverberate for a couple more weekends after. The one two punch of Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible The Final Reckoning created an outlier event that we never see over Memorial Day. Up until Top Gun Maverick brought the box-office back to life with $126.7 million in 2022, we hadn’t had a 3 day Memorial Day gross go over $100 million since 2008 when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull eked it’s way over $100 million in 3 days with $100.1 million (and whenever you see a gross like that, who knows what it really was…..). So to have a record breaker like Lilo & Stitch plus a rock solid opening with Mission: Impossible was a lightning strike. In fact, if you look at the 15 films of note over Memorial Day Weekend that opened between Indiana Jones in 2008 and Top Gun in 2022, they average to about a $60 million 3 day weekend, so last year we had an opening right on norm with Mission Impossible, and then had a record setting outlier in addition; so if you take Lilo out of last year, it’s a pretty normal Memorial Day Weekend. And looking a little deeper under the hood, the films that were on the high end but didn’t cross $100 million (just like the ones that soared over $100 million) it’s all IP driven; Hangover, Fast & Furious, Aladdin, Little Mermaid, X-Men. So we should prepare ourselves for the press to beat up next weekend because it’s not what we did last year (and it’s probably going to be a 9 figure difference between the two weekends), but in fact, it’s probably just back to a normal Memorial Day Weekend.
Anyway, with the same accuracy as the Anti-Woke mob’s fear that Christopher Nolan’s next project is a Genre Bending Rom-Com based on a treatment where the multicultural gay characters from Bridgerton immigrate to Montreal and start the NHL (working title: Two Minute Minor for Love*), here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.
Michael - This is now officially a juggernaut, and after getting back some PLF showtimes, it’s rock solid today. Both today and tomorrow should have a drop from last week in the 20’s (and maybe even in the teens), and the only thing keeping the weekend drop at a similar number will be the comedown from the exceptional Mother’s Day they had last Sunday. Looks like a scant drop of 35% for a weekend in the low 20’s.
The Devil Wears Prada 2 - It’s always interesting when a new film comes into the marketplace, you see which of the holdovers it’s taking some consumers from. This film was neck and neck with Michael all week, but with Obsession coming in this weekend, you can see where the audience came from. This is down a lot from last week, and looks like it will be off 50% or maybe a little more for a gross in the high teens with a shot at 20.
Obsession - Focus did a lot of things right here, from a really good trailer to a great date, but this film is a great example of how you can succeed in this sector. Because we’re asking people to leave their homes and go to a theater, you usually have to leverage some fanship or familiarity. So in order to get them interested it’s got to be familiar to them, that’s why we see so many IP’s leveraged for theatrical, it’s the familiarity that hooks the consumer. Tried and true stories, Shakespeare for instance, get repackaged because the consumer has seen that story and understands what it is. But it’s also got to have a new enough angle that it’s not overly familiar and the consumer feels like they’ve seen it. It’s one of the reasons Sequels started crashing and burning a while back, the went too far over the familiarity line. One of the tried and true stories is The Monkey Paw, and the idea of ‘be careful what you wish for’ has resonated with audiences from the beginning of time. So Focus (and Blumhouse) took the age-old (and familiar) idea of The Monkey Paw and applied it to skin deep attraction. By applying it to a situation that feels relevant to young consumers, it’s clearly hitting both sides of the familiar but not too familiar concept, and the numbers are very good today. It’s always interesting to see how the critics pick at something like this (because it’s an idea that someone who sees 15 movies a week, has seen a lot), and of course they called that out, but managed to fight through the familiarity and on an overall basis liked it. The exits seem to be good too, and it’s unlikely we’ll see this fall off sharply tomorrow. It’s about 50% better than another well liked Thriller like Talk to Me, which would put it in the mid teens.
The Sheep Detectives - The strong exits from last week, as well as the strong showing on Mother’s Day, are resonating today. It’s really good today, and the story should be very similar to what we’re seeing for Michael; a drop in the 20’s today and tomorrow and a big drop on Sunday without Mother’s Day. But looks down a really strong 35% for a weekend around $10 million.
In the Grey - Went 2000 runs and it has some decent numbers in the big cities on the coasts, but it falls off pretty fast once you get outside of those. Figure a weekend in the mid 4’s.
Top Gun 40th Anniversary - They’re running both Top Gun films in theaters this weekend (looks like there’s a separate admission for each) but they seem to be reporting the gross together. The grosses are pretty good, and it’s hard to tell when these re-issues are one day wonders, but this looks like a weekend of about $3 million.
Is God Is - Went 1500 runs but the core of the gross is coming from the best AA theaters, where it’s decent. But it falls off pretty quickly from those theaters and it looks like a weekend around $2 million.
- and since this is a Netflix IP and they want to get into theatrical, the puck in their zone…