Memorial Day weekend 2026

We’ve talked about this weekend for a while now, and it’s finally here. We had such an amazing (record breaking) Memorial Day last year, it would have taken another lightning strike like Lilo & Stitch to reproduce the same result. We do have a lightning strike this weekend, but it’s at a level that’s not going to put enough of a dent in the total number (more on that below); but because we’re missing Lilo this year, we’ll be down $100 million or maybe a little more from last year but the number we’re going to generate isn’t that unusual for Memorial Day weekend. This weekend will be actually better than 2024, in the same range as 2023 and 2017 but a decent amount behind 2022, 2019 and 2018.

But it’s no shock that the reason we’ll be lower than those weekends where the 3 day got up to the $200 million neighborhood (vs the $150 neighborhood we’ll be in this weekend), they had a tentpole that delivered near or past the $100 million 3 day; so….it’s the movies stupid. Top Gun Maverick, Aladdin and Solo were the drivers of those better Memorial Day weekends and having the lead tentpole a step below those, like this weekend, is actually pretty normal, and happens as much as the $100 million opening. Going back to the ‘we’re missing Lilo’ argument, the gross on Mandalorian is probably going to be pretty close what Mission: Impossible did last year over Memorial Weekend; so, once again, the gross for the #1 movie is something we see a lot this weekend, we’re just missing the outlier. The step back in box-office should only last a couple of weeks though, and we should be back to the same or better than 2025 in a couple of weeks.

Something happened last week that’s worth talking about here, and could affect the box-office going forward on some key dates for us. The NFL released their schedule and there was a very clear shift in the way they schedule their ‘A’ games. Up until last year, they (for the most part) kept their marquee games in the 1:25 pm Pacific/4:25 pm Eastern Sunday slot, but because they are about to enter their rights negotiation window, they’ve been looking for ways to expand their footprint; and they tried something last year that seems to have shifted their thinking. Normally for their Thanksgiving Day games they leaned on the IP power of the traditional Thanksgiving Day Game brands (Cowboys and Lions) and just let the brand do all the heavy lifting in the ratings without a marquee opponent. However, last Thanksgiving, they made the prime slot (1pm/4pm) an A game by putting the Kansas City Swifties Chiefs against the Cowboys; and 57 million people watched, it was the highest rated regular season game in the history of the NFL.

Calling the NFL the dominant factor in the media today is like saying Secretariat had a lead in the Belmont, it’s not even close and they rule the airways now. And when they released their schedule last week, they took a massive step forward in increasing that lead and had a keen eye towards domination outside of their traditional Sunday games. They realized that by looking for opportunities on other days besides their traditional slots, and by moving games that normally would play on Sunday to other days (especially the marquee matchups), they weren’t diluting their audience by having several games kick at the same time (on Sunday). All three Thanksgiving games are now A games, plus they are now looking at ‘unclaimed’ media real estate, and on days where there was nothing going on, they planted their flag. They added another A game to Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Eve, plus they now have 3 strong matchups on Christmas Day. There’s an upside to all of this, since we count on live sports to advertise movies (and capture those tagalongs) having more people watch is a net benefit for us (at a price, of course).

Most of the shift is towards days that aren’t terribly important to us; both Thanksgiving Eve and Christmas Eve are fairly insignificant (especially Christmas Eve), and Thanksgiving Day has always had NFL games on it, so any change there will only be incremental. The only part of this that’s concerning to me is the hard lean into Christmas Day by the NFL. That’s the day that’s key for us when it comes to opening movies and the box-office on Christmas Day usually sets the level of success for each film; and with Christmas Day being a Friday this year, there are 6 wide films opening on Christmas Day. One of the reasons it was probably a really good day for the box-office was that there was nothing going on media wise, TV was dead and once we had the growth of streamers, they had launched all their seasonal content well before. The NBA made Christmas Day their thing for their A games, but it’s the NBA and there are NBA Finals games that don’t get ratings as good as a Saints/Jets game in the early window of the 1st week of December, so the day was vulnerable for the NFL.

This year will be interesting to watch, and based on what we see box-office wise (especially how Christmas Day relates to the rest of the golden 8 days between Christmas and New Year’s) we might have to start thinking about a different strategy. Of course, not all movies have a commonality of audience with an NFL audience; and just like any sports league, what looks like an A game in May (when every team is undefeated and are Super Bowl Contenders), could be a C game once we get there, but it’s certainly something we have to monitor.

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as a box-office forecast for Valentine’s Day/President’s Day 2027 when Super Bowl Sunday is also Valentine’s Day and I have no idea what’s going to happen, here are some thoughts on this weekend’s box-office.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu - It’s amazing how much has changed in the 7 years since this IP dropped on Disney +, and since it takes a long time to get something of this size to market, those changes can have substantial effects. Back in 2019 when this dropped, it was a sensation and the idea of matriculating this IP from the platform to theaters made perfect sense back then. The Star Wars brand was at or near the top of the Disney IP food chain and with the original Star Wars storyline completing its cycle, it was a natural mining of the IP. But what we didn’t know (until we had to go through the experiments of windows, or lack thereof), there’s a massive difference in TV IP and Theatrical IP, and we saw IP after IP struggle when we got back into the theaters. For instance, Actors who meant something at the box-office before Covid, and then took the bag from the streamers during Covid, struggled to make a difference once they got back to Theatrical. Brands like Marvel had a lot of content on the platform and the Theatrical value (although still very good) didn’t seem to be what it used to be. But one of the key differences we learned over the 7 years was related to the quality index of the sector. We all thought Mandalorian and Grogu was great when it dropped, but we didn’t know how low the quality bar was back then, because we didn’t understand that streaming quality and theatrical quality were so far apart. But the Streaming Wars happened and the massive amount of mediocre content that was made just to keep up, steered the public toward a perception of streaming content being fair at best.

As I said above, it takes a long time to get a film of this size made; so once a lot of the market forces we’re dealing with today became apparent, Disney was in too far to turn back (and I’m not saying they wanted to). But Disney is Disney, and the results this weekend are really good considering what they were facing. They’ve got a movie from TV IP that got mostly 2 1/2 star reviews (and it’s pretty funny to watch the RT score hover in the low 60’s, so it’s technically fresh but even though it’s got over 100 reviews in, it can’t be marked certified fresh because mathematically it still could go rotten), and so far the audience that’s seen it seems to like it. But because ‘it’s not Lilo’ the press will probably beat it up this weekend as disappointing. But as I said above, this gross is very normal for the #1 movie on Memorial Day and just getting a TV IP to this level is an accomplishment on its own. They had a really nice opening day yesterday and the early numbers were very good today as well. However, it is showing the ‘fans only’ aspect of the way this is going and it’s been pretty flat since the beginning of the day. As of now, I’ll say it’s going to have a 3 day in the mid/high 60’s with a 4 day in the low 80’s. Better than what Mission Impossible did last year, and very similar to what we see on this weekend.

Michael - Still going, and the drop from last week is really good again, especially since they had to give back the PLFs. They’re going to fly by $300 million tomorrow and who knows where it’s gonna stop. Looks down only about 25% for the 3 day, which would put it in the very high teens, for a 4 day in the low 20’s.

Obsession - We’ve got box-office lightning striking here today, and if any of you follow the weekday grosses, this has been brewing all week; this $1 million film might be headed to $100 million domestic box-office. After coming in 3rd last weekend (by a decent margin) it was #1 everyday this week, and that inertia is showing up big time today. On an overall basis it’s up from last Friday, and we never ever see that; we’ve seen great holds lately like Sinners in week 2, but even that film was down 20% at this point and this is up a couple of points. Clearly this is a story that still resonates once you repurpose it for a younger audience (The Monkey Paw), but there’s a YouTube factor here that’s probably a big contributor. The film maker here has a short film (The Chair) that has almost 10 million views, and as much as we talk about leveraging new media for Theatrical, there are probably some breadcrumbs here that are worth following. Because of Distribution Math and the Thursday opening, this technically started the weekend 15% down, so if this stays even with last weekend it will be down 15%. But it’s up a decent amount right now and with a Monday holiday, the Sunday might make that difference up and this could come very close to the $17.2 million it grossed last weekend. But let’s call it 16 for now which would put the 4 day around 19. This is just a sensational result for Focus.

Passenger - Paramount has been doing a little A24/Neon imitation lately, and between this and January’s Primate, they’ve got a couple of smartly budgeted thrillers open to a respectable number. This looks about 80% of Primate so far, but the playability looks pretty weak so far and it might not sustain over the weekend. Figure a 3 day of around 8 and a 4 day in the mid 9’s.

I Love Boosters - This Boots Riley comedy went 1700 runs with strong reviews and just like his other films, the audiences look more hipster than AA. All the upscale theaters you would normally see for a Neon film are right where you normally see them, and the ones that played strong last week for Is God Is are nowhere to be seen. It’s pretty good where it’s good though, and it looks like a 3 day in the mid 3’s and a 4 day in the low 4’s.

Tuner - This Narrative film from Oscar Winning Documentarian Daniel Roher (Navalny) opened Exclusive NY/LA in 4 theaters (Lincoln Sq, Union Sq, Century City, The Grove). All 4 are pretty good, and this should end up with a solid psa in the mid/high 20’s in 3 and the mid 30’s in 4. For those of you who have heard that Leo Wodall is the ‘next thing’, this film is a pretty good way to understand what they are talking about.