Second weekend of June 2026

Another really good time at the box-office this weekend. Even though the box-office continues to impress week after week, and the sector keeps putting movies in theaters that show how the rigorous process of getting a film to theatrical pays off in quality; every once in a while we have a weekend where there’s a calendar aberration so it doesn’t quite look as good as it actually is. This weekend is a ‘leap year’ type situation and for the last couple of years Father’s Day was this weekend, but it’s next weekend this year. Even though last year’s Father’s Day had How to Train Your Dragon and Materialists combining to nearly $100 million, we’re still going to be competitive this weekend, and even though we might not quite get to the same number as last year, the shortfall should be pretty minimal. And that’s a component of the deep roster of films we’re bringing in week after week, and they are films that have some resonance with the audience (and in the case of Obsession, that’s a vast understatement). Next weekend is a different story, and the week after Father’s Day last year was decent but nothing special; but this year (since it’s Father’s Day) just Toy Story (Taylor’s Version) will outgross the entire sector’s last year gross. Other than a couple of aberrations, such as 4th of July on a Saturday this year and a weekend where there’s a big IP this year going up against another big IP from last year (so we’ll still be doing solid business, it’s just not as good as last year), the rest of the summer looks up up up.

Speaking of Obsession, the Theatrical sector press never fails to disappoint in their laziness. As the one two punch of Obsession and Backrooms rolled out, our news media seems to be lumping them into the same bucket: Youtube movies. And that is just not accurate, and it’s actually a disservice to Focus and Obsession and A24 and Backrooms. They are successful for two distinct reasons.

A24 had a massive IP on their hands with Backrooms, and it was a question of leveraging that IP Theatrically for a demo that needs a physical welfare check if the wi-fi is down for more than an hour. But they crushed it and have sent a lot of you scurrying for other YouTube IP’s to leverage. Obsession was a more traditional genre sell, and as much as the lazy press keeps positioning it like it came from YouTube IP, it didn’t. This was Focus recognizing a film with potential box-office, really stepping out with a price at TIFF that set a record, and then getting it open to a level that was at the high end of what a film of this budget and genre usually does. And the post opening results are where the press has gone astray.

As much as there are 4,217 (and that might be a low number) things that keep a Studio CMO up at night when they are trying to open a movie, there’s another aspect that is just as tricky and complicated, the chase. The chase is the campaign you budget and plan for to prop up the 2nd weekend, and more often than not you’re watching money fly out the window when the movie doesn’t work, and you’re chasing something that doesn’t really exist. But you always look for the breadcrumbs to follow and every once in a when all the stars align (and the movie touches a nerve that you can leverage), fanning those flames is just as complicated and artful as getting a movie open, and it’s not as simple as pulling up to a fire with an Exxon truck and then start spraying. And the unique aspect to the chase is when it comes at you from an angle you didn’t expect, so you have to pivot towards the stickiness and it can feel like a fire drill.

There have been some really good examples of artful chase campaigns that often get written off as something a good movie does, but in a world of digital media, understanding how to fan those flames (and it has to happen very quickly) is the hero no one talks about. Some really good examples lately are films like Sinners, Project Hail Mary and Michael; all of them had legs because their studios saw something to chase and executed it. But Obsession served up Focus an opportunity to create an outlier with the chase. You could see the seeds of it over the first weekend; by this time on opening Friday it looked like a weekend around $13 million; on Saturday morning it looked like 15 and then finished the weekend at 17. But we’ve seen examples like that where a film develops some inertia over opening weekend and then holds decent the next weekend (but still goes down); but the chase here defied gravity. As they went through their first weekdays, that inertia kept increasing and it did something that’s an outlier’s outlier, with Grogu coming in and grossing $82 million, they went up 39%. And then with Backrooms coming in on week #3 to $82 million, they went up again. That’s the chase in its highest form.

Here’s where the press got it wrong, Obsession has very little to do with YouTube, and it wasn’t YouTube that made this film tip. Yes, the director had made some shorts that had some fanship on YouTube, but it wasn’t at a level that would predict anything close to this (as opposed to Backrooms where there was a strong IP connection). This chase was about human emotion and relatability, and as much as this is going to sound like I’m going all Nicole Kidman on you, it’s going to the movies to feel something you can relate to. Sinners leaned into temptation, Project Hail Mary had fun and adventure (with a compromise component that brought a lot of demos together), Michael leveraged nostalgia in a way that pushed his later years to the side and allowed fans to feel like fans again without shame. And on Obsession, it was a situation we all have been through; a toxic relationship. As much as the supply side folks are chasing YouTube IPs, the Sell side folks need to take a deep dive into how Focus crushed this chase. It’s great to get a movie open, but if you can get it to hold up it’s what separates us from other sectors, so this chase should be studied thoroughly.

Last week, I talked about ‘compare and contrast’, and it reared its head this week when the Academy Board of Dictators Governors announced their annual Governors Awards, and you talk about compare and contrast. You look at the filmographies for Floyd Norman, Glen Close and Ridley Scott and you see consistency of work that rises to the level of Time Capsule or Library of Congress achievement; I couldn’t think of better choices. And then you look at the filmographies for the recipients of the Irving G. Thalberg award and think ‘huh?’ ‘Wait, WTF?’. The requirement of the Award according to the Academy is: The Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award is presented to a creative producer whose body of work reflects a consistently high quality of motion picture production. When I looked at their filmographies they looked light, I figured it was just me, so being a data guy I started looking at the data. The box-office results were pretty low, and average domestic box-office cume a little under $4 million per film; and looking at the filmographies, the key factor here (that was communicated in the press release) was ‘Independent films’ so that made sense. But then I started looking at the Rotten Tomatoes scores, and that’s where I really started scratching my head. Both Producers have an average score in the high 50’s in both the critics and the audience measure, so the Academy is giving an Honorary Oscar that should reflect a consistently high quality of motion picture production to Producers who made movies that had really slight box-office numbers and have a Rotten Tomatoes score that’s…..Rotten? Looking at the list of films in their filmographies, I don’t see movies that rise to the same Time capsule Library of Congress level that the other recipients achieved. In fact, just for fun I started looking at the filmographies of a lot of you who get this email, and a lot of you (in my opinion) have more profound filmographies. I did a job for these particular producers a while back and even though only one came to the screening, I seem to remember her being very nice, and it was a movie I really liked (although, like most of their filmography, it didn’t work theatrically), so I have no beef with them. But I’m just lost here, I just don’t get it, their filmographies and the requirements of the Award just don’t seem to match.

Maybe this is just a question of the Governors not communicating why this is being awarded in the press release, but if that’s the case, lack of transparency is right on norm for them. They throw things over the wall at the membership all the time. This is the same group that decided to expand the Best Picture Category to more than 5 films (only for that category), put in ranked voting for the Best Picture Category (only for that category) and after a tweet bothered them enough that they shit themselves, they threw open the gates of membership to a couple of thousand under or unqualified members; all without asking the membership what they thought about the issue. As I’ve brought up here several times, it’s very difficult not to get caught in a bubble these days, and adding some transparency is a good way of getting out of a bubble; and putting ideas to the membership (even in a non binding vote) might be a good way to get out of the bubble.

I’m not saying I hate this choice, I don’t understand it; so if anyone can educate me here, I’m all for it, but more than likely my response to you will be ‘your filmography is better’.

Anyway, with the accuracy normally associated with any headline about the Iraq war being settled, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Disclosure Day - It’s nice to get back to Spielberg Classic, and going all the way back to Jaws, Summer and Spielberg go hand in hand. As much as it’s always great for artists like Spielberg to spread their creative wings, which he has done spectacularly well, it’s fun to see how the consumer responds to something that’s comforting and nostalgic. Individual reviews don’t seem to matter anymore, but the aggregators do and a lot of the top line snippets from the critics pointed towards ‘Spielberg doing what Spielberg does best’, and that’s a good thing for the box-office on a Spielberg film. This has been a really weird movie for the last couple of months. As I spoke to folks in the sector about this movie the response was usually ‘ewww, that movie’, it’s going to be bad, maybe high 20’s shot at 30. Which seemed weird to me, it’s Speilberg and Universal, and they’re both pretty good at this. The opening numbers yesterday were pretty good, especially for a PG13 original IP. Today has been more of the same, and it’s looking a lot like another PG13 Sci-FI thriller like A Quiet Place Day One. This skews a little older than that (and it’s longer) so this won’t play as deep into tonight, but since this plays older and it’s original IP, it should be pretty good tomorrow and the difference between the two might wash out. For now I’ll say it ends up around 50.

Obsession - This is now officially the Titanic of toxic relationship movies, but in a big news flash (considering the history of the movie) it’s actually down a little today. Shocking. It’s only down in the 20’s, but it’s amazing how this film has been an annuity since it opened, grossing in the mid 40’s week after week. It still looks good enough for a weekend in the 20’s though (off 25%), which considering it’s in week 5 and it opened to 17…is just crazy and I’m still not sure where it’s going to end.

Scary Movie - Down a decent amount today, but with the combination of mid exits, being pretty fan based and a drop that aligns with the history of the IP; looks down 65% for a weekend just short of 20.

Masters of the Universe - Same here, fan based, played pretty good but always struggled to get outside the core. Down 55% for low teens.

STOP! THAT! TRAIN! - RuPaul’s take on Airplane! (And that title didn’t need to be in all caps, but part of the Drag Queen playbook is taking everything to 11), there’s clearly some fanship here and as you can guess it’s doing the majority of its business where LBGT films thrive. Went 1100 runs and the core runs are pretty good, but it falls off pretty fast once you get past them. Looks good enough for mid 3’s and it has a Rotten Tomatoes score at 84%, so we should probably consider all the filmmakers for the Thalberg award next year.

The Furious - The trades used to refer to films like this as ‘Chopsocky’s’, and if you read the reviews on this movie, it might be The Godfather of Chopsocky’s. Lionsgate has done a nice job of picking up films like this (and others like Sisu) for their labels (Lionsgate Premier in this case) and getting them to a level that gives them a shot at running. They went 1200 runs and it looks good enough for a weekend in the low 3’s, or about the same as the average ‘all in’ cume for the Thalberg recipients this year. And with a 98% critics score and a 94% audience score, clearly the film makers here should get thrown in the hopper for the Thalberg award next year, especially since this is apparently The Godfather of Chopsocky movies.