Fourth weekend of June 2026

Because this weekend last year was just okay, and other than the opening of F1 the box-office was pretty mid (including the below mid M3GAN 2.0). So even though we have a couple of IP’s that are struggling with their execution this weekend, we’ll still have a comfortable lead over the same weekend last year, but that’s because of the strong roster of holdovers from previous weeks.

When I wrote this last week, I wasn’t quite sure how much of an effect the Juneteenth Holiday was having on the box-office, and when I hit send my laptop almost burst into flames with OOO replies; as someone who exists outside a big company infrastructure, I wasn’t really aware how many companies were closed last Friday, so I was clearly out of the loop. But with box-office data you can look at what the grosses the next day (last Saturday) and today, and by comparing them to appropriate norms for this time of year you can understand how big of an effect the holiday had (and in this case the Holiday evolved very rapidly). With a film like Toy Story 5, the Pixar/Disney animation films this time of year have gone up 3% to 5% on Saturday for the last 25 years, and this went down 13%. Looking at today’s grosses, this is down 20 points more than the last substantial Disney/Pixar IP Inside Out 2 was on the 2nd Friday, and everything else on the sheet is way down from last Friday. So the holiday last Friday was a massive box-office accelerant, and even though the actual day next year is Saturday, we’ll have to account for it because the National Holiday is on Friday.

The next couple of weeks should be similar to this weekend, big IP’s that are getting questionable executions; and because they’re still big IP’s, they’ll do good business, but they’ll all be short of what they did in the past. But any dip in the box-office, most likely the week after next, should be temporary and we’ll be back in the plus column very quickly.

I got a bunch more responses to my Academy rants, and almost all of them were related to the ranked choice aspect for Best Picture, and why we are doing that (and why I didn’t key on it in addition to the number of films nominated). Since this got thrown over the wall at membership, and no explanation was given, I didn’t know the answer. So I asked some friends who are a little more knowledgeable, and apparently the idea is that by having 2nd and 3rd place votes influence the winner, it ‘takes the temperature of the electorate better than just counting a winner (1st place votes)’. But that was the official response, the ‘off the record’ response was ‘we push for it in places where we can’t win in a one person one vote situation and our candidates have a shot using this math’. You can draw your own conclusions about who pushed for this, but it’s probably the same group that’s keeping the money faucet open as wide as possible for the longest time possible (and continues to make money while the talent works for free). And why the one member one vote thing is just fine for every other category but Best Picture, which is the biggest honey pot for the IAC, tells you a lot. Think of it the way we think of data in our sector during the test screening process. You’ve probably seen a situation where a filmmaker says (after a test screening) ‘well I know we didn’t have many Excellents but if you count our Very Goods and Goods we did really well’. Sure. As we all know, Very Good and Good (as well as ‘Probably Recommend’) don’t matter, you need to be Excellent if you want to have a shot at success, because Excellent is a better measure of achievement.

I might be completely wrong here, but the ‘sell’ here was probably ‘let’s give the little film a shot’, and that might have been an interesting idea back in 2009. It’s a different world now and we’re in a world where the big studio films almost have one arm tied behind their back because of their success. But here again, if we want to continue this, show us the data (and we don’t need to know what the films are so the data can be blinded) over the course of this period, how many films got the most 1st place votes and didn’t win Best Picture? And once again it’s got to be the studios that write the checks who need to say this doesn’t work for us to the Governors. One member one vote is an idea that should happen in every category, otherwise we’re just like all the states that are putting their thumb on the scale with the electorate so they can win, no matter how they get there.

Anyway, based on something I heard while navigating the M.C. Escher painting that is American’s Terminal 4 at LAX, here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

Toy Story 5 - This is going to have a pretty sharp drop this weekend, but it has nothing to do with the quality or playability of the movie. This film, as well as a lot of other films last weekend, got a big lift from the Holiday and Father’s Day, but now they will come back down with no box-office accelerant this weekend. And because this film had an outlier Thursday night gross (because it was a quasi Friday night with a Holiday the next day), the Apples to Oranges Distribution math will cause it to start the weekend down 11%. All that should add up to an eye watering drop close to 70% today, and without Father’s Day this Sunday, that day should have a pretty hefty drop too. But tomorrow should be a better indicator about what the holdover would have looked like in an Apple to Apples comparison. All that being said, the drop will probably come in off 60% from last weekend for a gross in the mid 60s.

Supergirl - This film is a classic example of how ‘this business is hard’. Any of the Superman and Superman adjacent IP’s are really powerful, but you also have a fan base that is very tough to please. One of the challenges with an IP like this is how you can broaden the appeal outside of those older males that are at the core of the DC brand, and that’s a challenge in itself because you need to take the IP in a direction that seems relevant (and new) to other (non-core) moviegoing consumers without alienating the tried and true fans. But there’s another aspect to any Female Character led Action IP these days, we’re failing to attract the audience we’re doing it for. On Supergirl as well as Furiosa and Ballerina, it’s the same 60% to 70% male audience we see on any Male driven action movie, so if we’re making these Female driven movies to attract Females, but it’s not working and Females don’t seem to give a shit. Birds of Prey was the only one recently that got close to an even gender split, and maybe it’s because the lead character had a line where she asks ‘if there’s time for a shoe change’ between beatings she was giving out; so maybe there’s some breadcrumbs to follow there. But whatever the issue is, what we’re doing isn’t working and we have to figure it out. It could be that we’re struggling to figure out how to cast it correctly, and we just don’t seem to be able to find Actors that have the physicality that reads ‘badass’. We had success in the past with Actors who could pull it off, Charlize, Gal, Angelina and Margo; all had the physicality that read correctly and delivered a female audience. But we’ve tried smaller/waifier Actresses lately like Ana de Armas and Anya Taylor-Joy; and with Milly Alcock it’s a similar situation where we just don’t seem to be able to get away with a physically slighter Female Actor the same way we can pull it of with a slightly built Male (i.e Timmy Chalamet in Dune or Paul Mescal in Gladiator). And once you get past the casting challenges, you need to take the story in a direction that feels new; but the ‘Mad Max meets Guardians of the Galaxy’ direction this went seems to be landing just as dated as Masters of the Universe did a couple of weeks ago or Tron did last year. The exits here are okay so it’s probably not a one day wonder, and it’s running just behind another film that the anti-woke police tried to start some shit with, Lightyear. If it stays close that should put it in the mid 40’s, which tells us what the ‘fans only’ gross looks like with this IP. But if this is indeed ‘fans only’ this will flatten out over the weekend and will wander closer to 40.

e.e. cummings’ jackass: best and last - Another odd treatment of an IP, and it’s kind of funny how this film is mostly a tribute film; only about 1/3 of the film is new content, and the grosses are also about 1/3 of the last Jackass movie. So when you only have 1/3 the (new) kicks to the nuts, you only get 1/3 the gross. The interesting aspect about this movie is how the critics really liked it and thought it was a really nice warm tribute to the series and a fitting ending; but it’s not making one bit of difference at the box-office. If it continues to do the same percentage of what Jackass Forever did ($23 million) that would put it at $9 million to $10 million.

Obsession - Obsession is down! Repeat, Obsession is down! This is not a drill! Actually it’s down a decent amount but Obsession being Obsession it’s down 20 point less than everything else. It looks like a pretty resilient -35% for a weekend of about 9.

The Invite - 7 runs NY/LA, psa of $50k or so.