Final weekend of May 2026

To call this weekend at the box-office exciting would be an understatement, there’s a lot going on, and for the most part it’s good. Because we have a couple of outliers this weekend, we should easily beat the same weekend from 2025, and a couple of weeks ago I thought we would be 20% to 30% behind this weekend because we didn’t have an answer for Lilo & Stitch this year (even in the 2nd weekend). After last weekend where both Mandalorian & Grogu and Obsession delivered more than I expected (but Lilo was so massive last year, we still gave back some of our cushion, and the bleeding was not as bad so we’re about 12% ahead of last year’s cume), and the new films on this weekend last year were just okay (Karate Kid, Bring Her Back), we’re looking really good from this weekend on. There will be a couple of weekends in July that might be close, 4th of July for instance, because the 4th is on Saturday this year and it’s not usually a great box-office day, the sector looks pretty bright right now.

There are two big ideas to talk about this weekend, one is very very good, and the other one is a fail on our part.

The good news headline is we’re connecting with young moviegoers, in a very big way. We’ve heard over and over again how the Youngs have been shunning traditional media (TV) and have migrated to YouTube (as well as other online platforms), and because they are on YouTube we can’t reach them and they don’t seem to want to put down the phone and go to a movie. As a sector that has to constantly evolve to survive, it was only a matter of time before we figured out how to leverage that YouTube fame for Theatrical. Going back to the beginning of time of Theatrical, we’ve traditionally taken the talent/IP generated from another sector into Theatrical box-office. From the 30’s, when talkies came in and…..we needed actors who could talk, we went to Broadway to find the talent we needed. Once TV matured, we took the actor IP generated from TV and turned them into Movie Stars; George Clooney for instance. But it’s interesting how even today, with all these new platforms of distribution that generate insane amounts of income, when you look at the attention the two movies connected to YouTube are going to be treated by the media this weekend; all those other distribution channels are the Minor Leagues and everyone still wants to play in the Majors of Theatrical. You rarely see mainstream headlines about how many views something had on YouTube, TikTok, etc; and any given streamer gets lumped into the same level as TV ratings, but being #1 at the box-office and setting records is a rarified air that is just different.

The flip side of our newfound success leveraging YouTube to Theatrical is our failure to convert Stand Up Comic IP to Theatrical Box-Office, and we just can’t seem to crack the code here. Jo Koy, Bert Kreischer, Sebastian Maniscalco and now Nate Bargatze; all sell out arenas and stadiums, but they all end up with a Theatrical opening weekend in the mid single digits. Four different A level comics, 4 different studios, same result. All of these comics have to leave Millions on the table to come off the road to do a movie, but the fans don’t show at the theater. And there are a couple of key factors to take into account here that make this even more puzzling. First, all the movies these comics make have a story that connects to their stand up routines, so you would think that the two ideas would connect at the box-office. Second, the movies all seem to be pretty satisfying to the fans and they all end up with Audience scores in the 80’s on RT. But as I’ve brought this up to industry friends, I’ve heard pushback along the lines of ‘well, there’s so much of their content on Netflix and Podcasts, etc. Hmmm, soooo we’re going to have over $100 million of box-office this weekend where similar content is on YouTube, but because these Comics have content on platforms, it washes out their theatrical value? We’re clearly doing something wrong here, and I’m not saying these films should open to tentpole level, but with the live crowds they attract, they should end up in the mid teens. If you make a movie with them at a reasonable cost (which they did), you should be profitable. Maybe it’s just a by-product of not having a lot of comedy in our sector, but we’re clearly not unlocking a part of this idea.

Anyway, based on something I read in the Freedom 250 artist performance guide that suggests ways to stretch a 60 minute set into 4 hours by playing YMCA between each song, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Backrooms - Welcome to the Adult table A24, and getting what they are getting today demo wise, this film is one of two reasons for all of us to pop a nice bottle this weekend. After winning a ton of Oscars a couple of years ago on Everything Everywhere, A24 started stepping up in class with bigger budgets and marketing spends that got closer to what the legacy studios spend, including some TV spend. But as much as they had success with films like Marty Supreme that got them oh so close to a $100 million domestic cume, their biggest opening weekend was on Civil War at $25.7 million. By the time you read this, they will have probably passed that opening weekend number on Civil War, so this is a massive arrival. I’ve harped on A24 here (a lot), because one of the reasons they were grossing what they were grossing was the inability to activate movie goers in the middle of the country. Looking at the grosses by region, this looks nothing like an A24 opening, it looks like a Major; it’s still really good in the big cities and the coasts (which were never a problem for A24), but the middle of the country is just as good.

But as much as this is a crazy good opening, the reason we should all pop a good bottle this weekend is over half the audience is under 25, and there are more young males than young females going; and that’s an idea we thought was long gone. I know the common thinking in our very competitive sector goes something like ‘when my best friends movie opens huge, a little piece of me dies’, but between what’s going on with this film and Obsession (more on that next), their success is a success for all of us and we now have some breadcrumbs to follow in making young adults consider Theatrical again, especially young males. And having those breadcrumbs is worth an industry wide celebration; especially since this film still lives in a world that we’re already fairly comfortable in, existing IP.

We’ve been leaning on TV IP we know for a while (because we had success in the past and it spoke to us, plus any historical success makes things easier to get made), but looking at the two breakout films this weekend reminds me of another time in Theatrical, the late 60’s/early 70’s. The established Studio system was leaning on IP they had experienced success with and that spoke to the current power holders; Broadway Musicals like Oliver, Camelot and Hello, Dolly and Historical epics like A Man for All Seasons. But along came a group of young filmmakers that found material that connected better with young people; Midnight Cowboy, Easy Rider, Five Easy Pieces, 2001. And those films gave the sector some successful breadcrumbs to follow, and the treasure trove of great films in the 70’s followed; because previous success of something similar was an easier pitch. We’ve been mining (deeply) TV IP that spoke to the age of the power structure, but the results keep getting worse and worse. But YouTube is TV for young people (and if you speak to anyone in their late teens or early 20’s, this is a very well known IP on YouTube), so the fact that we’ve got a couple of films breaking out now that are based on what young people consider TV isn’t that revolutionary an idea. And that’s why it’s a celebration for the whole sector this weekend, because I’m sure there have been other films pitched based on YouTube IP, but without one breaking through it was a tough sell.

The grosses today are in line with yesterday’s gross and it looks super presale heavy so it’s not growing very fast. It looks like the audience likes the film but doesn’t love it, so we could see some flatness tomorrow and Sunday. It’s running just behind Five Nights at Freddys right now, and that film wasn’t loved either so figure this ends up in the mid/high 70’s. So this is a tremendous achievement for A24, welcome to the big studio table, but being at the big studio table comes with a price; very soon everyone will be asking ‘when are you going to do this again…..’.

Obsession - There are weekends and films that I will remember forever, films like Titanic and Avatar that just kept producing week after week. Weekends like Barbenheimer, Christmas Day’s that 3 or 4 films over delivered, and of course (since I’m really old) films that surprised us opening weekend because we had no tracking or pre sales back then; you had to wait until the box-office opened to know who was gonna show up (we didn’t even have Rentrak back then, you had to call the theater to get a gross on opening day). But this film is just insane, I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this ever. This time last week, I told you how there was something going on, and I thought it would only be down a little; and it just kept getting better and better and ended the weekend up 39%. That’s continued this week and this is a snowball that just keeps growing as it rolls downhill, it beat Grogu on Wednesday and Thursday, and it’s actually up from last Friday today, by a lot. It’s fucking insane, almost like there’s a scene in the movie where Nikki gets on Bear’s shoulders and yells “Chicken Jockey!!!!”. It’s such an outlier right now that I don’t know where this is going to go, but there’s a path where this $1 million film (shot in LA btw), will have a bigger domestic cume than Grogu. WTF? It’s like we’re in the upside down, box-office wise*, but what’s incredibly encouraging to the Theatrical sector is both core audiences for Obsession and Backrooms are moviegoers under 25, so in theory both should not be succeeding the way they are, once should have been less than it is. It’s all very head scratching but amazing at the same time.

So what’s it gonna do this weekend? I have no clue, it’s up 30% from last Friday now, but at this time last week it was up 5% and ended up nearly 40%. Just as a stab in the dark I’ll say it’s up 25% for a weekend around 30. Some of you last week laughed at me when I said this was on its way to $100 million, but looking at today, $200 million isn’t out of the question. But this is a box-office ride I’ll remember forever.

Star Wars: The Mandalorian & Grogu - My Dad used to have this expression ‘if you let them, people will tell you who they are’, and sometimes that applies to movies as well. We kept looking at this as a Star Wars film and we thought it would perform like a Star Wars film, but once it got in the marketplace it told us it was a Family film. So the soft Thursday night and the substantial increase on Saturday all made sense because that’s what this film is. It will be interesting to see how that plays out in week 2, but right now it looks down 65% for a weekend just short of 30.

The Breadwinner - Sun Rises, Sun Sets, Stand up comic film does mid single digits to open. Nate Bargatze certainly has an audience, and it shows where this is doing business (the red states), but it’s really at the same level (but just different regions) as the other comic’s movies. There might be a little family bounce tomorrow (a lot of kids are out already so we’ll not see the big family bounces again till mid August), but right now this looks like $6 million or so.

Pressure - Focus probably had a tough time with this movie today, because they had to keep an eye on the front door and keep the hourly Brinks Truck dumps from spilling all that money out onto Lankershim. But as usual they did a great job on this WWII drama that appeals to moviegoers who own Jitterbug phones and don’t know what YouTube is. It’s a little better than some similar Drama’s we’ve seen over the past couple of years like Devotion or Nuremberg, figure it ends up the weekend around $5 million.

Tuner - Expanded to 450 runs and it has some solid numbers in the big city upscale theaters. Figure a weekend around $1 million.

• although the key demo that’s driving this is moviegoers in their early 20’s, who are younger than the actors in their mid/late 20’s playing teenagers in Stranger Things, so even the Upside Down is kind of Upside Down.