Third weekend of June 2026

The box-office has been volcanic hot lately, driven by some films that have injected the sector with audiences we haven’t seen in a while, and we thought this weekend was going to be very good by adding a tried and true IP. But the films (especially one film) that brought new life just aren’t going away and the dependable IP is delivering at a level that we haven’t seen in a while. We also have a holiday today in Juneteenth; and because it’s a new holiday and I’m not quite sure what it’s going to mean at the box-office, we might have a situation where today is bigger than both Saturday and Sunday. We’ve also got Father’s Day this Sunday, which when you put the right film on the day is a box-office accelerant (but not as good as a Female film on Mother’s Day), so it’s all upside this weekend.

When you add those things together, we’ve got a shot at setting a record this weekend for the highest grossing weekend for this part of June, and it makes sense that it would beat the same weekend in 2018 when Pixar had their best opening ever with Incredibles 2 at $183 million. The key aspect here is the holiday, and since Juneteenth is linked to the actual date of June 19, it moves around every year; that’s why it’s a puzzler for the box-office, since it’s become a holiday it’s been on weekdays until this year. We might have to treat it like we treat Veterans Day in November, and it only really has an effect on the box-office when it’s not mid-week. All that being said it’s going to add up to almost double the total gross as we had on this weekend last year (28 Years Later, Elio) and that surplus should be well into 9 figures, against a non-Father’s Day weekend. Because this weekend will be so good, we should see the downstream effects of this over the next couple of weeks. Next week wasn’t a problem and we should have a substantial lead over last year, but we might have enough of a running start to beat the 4th of July weekend last year, even with the 4th (which usually sucks at the box-office) on a Saturday. The weekend after that is still an issue, but that’s more of an IP battle (Moana vs Superman) and every IP can’t be huge all the time. But the key comp we keep looking back at is 2019 and we’re back to that level or higher on a lot of these weekends.

When I write this and vomit out various parts of what’s currently rattling around in my head, it’s always interesting to see what resonates when I get responses. Even though I thought the Obsession/Backrooms stuff was the most interesting last week, it didn’t generate much feedback. The Thalberg take did a little better, but way ahead of everything was the feedback about how the Governor’s have thrown the Best Picture rules over the fence at us (more than 5 noms and ranked choice in voting) and the key sentiment was ‘yeah, why are we doing that?’. But since I’m a part time amateur data scientist, and we now have 17 years of data (the first year we did it was 2010), we should look at the data.

The Academy needs to prove this is worth the effort by showing us one thing: over the 17 years where there have been more than 5 films nominated, how many films that placed 6th or lower in the nomination process finished in the top 5 when the actual award votes came in? And if it’s a very slight number (and I’m pretty sure it is), why are we continuing to do it?

Of course that’s a super easy answer, it’s a job creation mechanism for the Industrial Awards Complex. 3 to 5 more nominees equals 3 to 5 more (insanely expensive) campaigns for 6 more weeks that have little or no effect on the final outcome. And the key reason we need to re-examine this is because, just like everything else in the Theatrical sector, it’s a different world than it was in 2009 when this was enacted. Back in 2009, there was a plausible (but still diminishing) ROI on a Best Picture Campaign, but today there is zero ROI on awards campaigns. It’s so bad that the campaigns should be eligible for a tax break because it’s straight up charity to the Industrial Awards Complex……and of course stoking the egos of the nominees. The only way this is going to change is not going to come from the membership*, it’s got to come from the Studios, because they’re the ones who have to write the check. And in these days of cutbacks, reorgs and contraction, as people are losing jobs left and right the optics of throwing stupid money at something like a Best Picture Nominee that came in 9th in the Nomination voting and will come in 9th in the Awards voting is pretty bad. But right now the Studios are trapped, under the current system they can’t tell their talent that they won’t spend money once they get nominated, so they have no choice.

There’s a decent amount of you (who get this) who are part of the IAC and you’ve had a great ride if you’re part of this, but you can’t expect the studios to pay for the band to keep playing when you’re the only one dancing at the party. On the other hand there are a lot of you in the Marketing side of this sector, who could take that budget being wasted on a useless Best Picture campaign and spread it across the spend for a couple of movies, and that bump in the spend might make the difference in the film tipping at the box-office and create actual ROI. There are also a lot of you who get this who could take that Awards budget and (considering what’s happening at the box-office currently) make 9 or 10 Obsessions, or two Backrooms or Anora’s; all of which would have a shot at some ROI. Over the 17 years since this was enacted, our sector has changed a lot, and we’ve experimented with a lot of ideas (sometimes with a gun to our head during Covid) like Windows. And we’ve come out of that period smarter because we’ve tried things that didn’t work and we’ve realized we had it right before, like Windows.

So back to my original point; what does the data say and was this particular experiment successful? Even though the Academy is the opposite of transparent when it comes to sharing voting data, there’s a logical solution to this. The Studio heads should demand the Academy have PricewaterhouseCoopers take the voting totals over the last 17 years and based on the results, calculate the percentage chance of a film that came in 6th (or later) in the nominations winning the award. It’s a super simple idea and the data would be blind so the vote totals would remain at PwC, the studios would only see the likelihood percentages. And since the only two people who consider 2nd place good are Olympians and White People in the Southeast, if all the movies that came in 6th or higher have a zero percentage of coming in 1st, it’s time to move on and go back to 5 nominees. Because the studios just can’t keep writing checks when a deep historical database is telling them they are throwing money out the window.

But they’re the only ones that can make it happen, and the internal discussion should be focused on the idea of ‘do we want one more Best Picture campaign, or do we take that money and have a better shot of making more movies or making the movies we’ve already made work at the box-office?’.

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as a Marketing executive thinking putting David Beckham in their World Cup ads was an outlier idea, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Toy Story 5 - This series has been a good example of how insane our expectations are in this business. Back in 2019, Toy Story 4 opened to only $121 million and there was a lot of chatter that weekend in the industry press about ‘what’s wrong with Disney?’, mostly because the previous year The Incredibles 2 had opened to a Pixar record of $183 million. So having a $123 million opening is disappointing in our world, yay. Now Disney did have a rare Release Date hiccup with that film and released it the weekend after Father’s Day (which was pretty head scratching), but the glass half empty press had a good time with it. But with this 5th film in the series, it seems like Disney/Pixar walked the perfect line between familiarity and new; and although some of the critics called out the familiarity part as being a little too similar to the first film, the familiarity part gets a film like this open and the over familiarity part of it comes up in the subsequent weeks. But this is all consistent with what’s been working at the box-office lately; new versions of Fatal Attraction, The Shining, the Fan Friendly Music Biopic and Close Encounters of the Third Kind. It’s been 31 (!) years since Toy Story opened, so if this is indeed a rehash of the first film, it’s been a minute so that’s okay. One thing that Disney does exceptionally well, and they were an early adopter on activating the Hispanic moviegoer, and that’s showing up big time today (again). The Hispanic theaters are leading the way big time right now, and looking at their exceptional opening day gross yesterday, I kinda wonder if that would have been bigger if Mexico wasn’t playing in the World Cup last night, and it’s possible some of that business that usually happens on Thursday is happening today. As far as where this is going to go, I’m not sure because I’m not sure how much lift we’re getting today from the holiday. But just using Inside Out 2 from 2 years ago as a guide, it’s saying maybe 180 or so. So it’s clearly in the realm of the Incredibles 2 record.

Disclosure Day - The numbers today are a little promising, but I’m still a little wary of what the Juneteenth holiday means today. Looking at the other holdovers on the sheet it looks like there’s a little lift going on today, so this is probably headed for the usual 50% drop norm, even with a decent Father’s Day lift. That would put it in the low 20’s.

Obsession - The band just keeps on playing here and once again the weekdays just keep doing weird things, and this actually outgrossed Disclosure Day yesterday to win the day. This passed $200 million last night and I still don’t know where the end is, but this weekend so far looks down about 25% or so for a gross in the mid teens, or about where it started 6 weeks ago. Crazy.

The Death of Robin Hood, Leviticus, Girls Like Girls - All three of these LGBT targeted films** look like they’re headed for the same $3 million (give or take $500k gross), and the grosses fall off pretty quickly once you get out of the big cities.

*c’mon, like the Governors give a shit about what we think

** we all know what the real deal was between Robin Hood and Will Scarlet.