Fourth weekend of July 2026

Going into this weekend, we knew we were going to be behind the total from the same weekend last year (Fantastic Four), the question was how much, and it all rested on the very broad shoulders of The Odyssey. Looking at various 2nd weekend scenarios, there was good (Oppenheimer -43%), great (Sinners -5%) and insane (Obsession +39%); and good would put us about 25% behind, great would get us close but we would still be about 10% behind, and insane would mean that weekend #2 of The Odyssey would outgross the entire business for that weekend in 2025. At this point it’s definitely better than Oppenheimer but not quite as good as Sinners, but it certainly looks very good so far, so we won’t quite make it to last year’s total but it’s not going to be terrible.

We’ve got a ‘BarbenHeimer-ish’ situation next weekend, and it might be a peek into what’s going to happen at Christmas as well. As I pointed out last week it’s going to be interesting to see how The Odyssey does next week when they lose a lot of PLF screens to Spider-Man, but there’s a wrinkle to that idea; Spidey doesn’t have any IMAX screens, they’re all staying with The Odyssey. Generally IMAX is the top dog as the preferred destination for PLF minded consumers, with Dolby right behind them (and sometimes a little ahead depending on the film) and last weekend IMAX tickets accounted for about 25% of the total revenue on The Odyssey. So when Spidey opens next weekend, does that mean that it’s only going to gross 75% of what it would have if they had all the PLF’s? Probably not, because the IMAX trigger isn’t as strong with something like Spidey, and it won’t have the same ‘see it the right way’ barrier as The Odyssey where they’ll wait for an IMAX seat to become available.

Looking at Christmas, we’ve got the same situation on December 18 with Dunesday, and Dune Part Three has all the IMAX screens for the entire holiday period. So as much as Barbenheimer was a good example of how two big films could exist on the same opening weekend, Oppenheimer was the clear choice for the PLF screens and Barbie had only a small percentage of them (only about 15% of the opening weekend gross), but Barbie was positioned as a film that didn’t scream PLF. But next weekend and at Christmas this year, you’ve got two films that are going head to head that have positioned themselves with consumers as not only PLF friendly, but kind of required. And next weekend could give us a preview of what Christmas is going to look like.

Disney is trying to alleviate the IMAX/Dolby shortage by introducing their own PLFish brand for Avengers: Doomsday, Infinity Vision, but it’s unlikely it will have any effect for a very simple reason. The Consumer has had so many bullshit branding/marketing labels thrown at them including XD, XL, 4DX, RFX, Screen X, Smell-O-Vision, CinemaScope, VistaVision, Wall of Sound, Loge Seating, Sound 360, Sensurround, 3D v1, D-150, Cinerama, 3D v2 and of course Disney’s own Thrillomedy. Because there’s a decent amount of brand clutter in the Megaplex’s today, when it comes to choosing how they see a movie Theatrical Consumers have more options these days than a High School Senior in Manhattan Beach; and there’s a reason consumers flock to IMAX and Dolby and no one gives a shit about any of the others (for the most part). Dolby’s first movie was A Clockwork Orange in 1971, had a breakout release with A Star Is Born in 1976 and then really tipped with the 70mm prints of Star Wars in 1977. IMAX became known for outstanding quality by building unique theaters (specifically sized for their taller screens) at Museums and Expositions in the 1970s, and produced Nature, Travel and Adventure Docs in their unique process that was incredibly immersive and almost felt like 3D. So both of those brands have 50 years of history, and they have the brand glow because they delivered something of a higher quality, but it was also at a level that consumers could see and hear. Back in 1977, you had two choices to see Star Wars, 70mm 6 Track Dolby Stereo or Mono (and the first wave of 32 theaters over Memorial Day were all 70mm runs in the great 1000 seat plus Cinema Places in each market across the country); so you can understand how the echoes of that vast difference in moviegoing experiences is paying off for the brand today.

I’m not sure what Infinity Vision is, it sounds a lot like TAP (theater alignment program, where techs went into theaters before a big movie to make sure everything was aligned correctly) that was around a while back (and the consumer was never told about it and no one cared), so didn’t generate any sort of brand loyalty. But as an industry we need another brand that can generate interest from consumers and doesn’t feel like a upcharge money grab (like AMC’s XL). We need to have the infrastructure choice in place, so it’s not a disaster if your movie is being released on a weekend where the IMAX’s are spoken for. The only way that can happen is if (whatever Infinity Vision is) it’s real and the audiences see and hear the difference. But there’s a part 2 to the whole idea, this can’t be just Disney doing it, the whole industry has to buy in (assuming there’s a ‘there there’ and it’s worth it), otherwise it’s going to die. This needs to be positioned and marketed to the teeth, to the point (and I’m just spitballing here) where there are press drops from brand name film makers saying they prefer their film to be seen in Infinity Vision over IMAX or Dolby. But it needs to be real and it can’t be something only I might notice (and I used to be a projectionist*); but if no one else sees the difference, and/or if no other studios buy in and use it; we’ll check back in 20 years and it will probably have gone the way of all those other labels I listed.

Circling back to the PLF situation next weekend, this sort of ‘shelf space bottleneck’ is really really good for the sector, because we’re at capacity. Yes, looking at how The Odyssey did without a Barbie opening against it tells us that both Oppenheimer and Barbie would have been better on opening weekend without the other there, but they combined to $1 billion domestic gross (and $2.6 billion WW), so how greedy do you want to get? Yes, Spidey will do a little less with The Odyssey in the marketplace (and taking up the IMAX screens), but it’s just the limits of our current retail infrastructure, but it’s going to be crazy good next weekend. Situations like this (and at Christmas this year) are really good for the sector and everyone is going to make money. So if the Entertainment press does their usual ‘yeah, but’ glass half empty thing after next weekend, pay no attention to them, we’re doing fine.

In another Theatrical infrastructure issue, it looks like we’re getting the Arclight Hollywood back soon. Clearly this is great news for the Specialty film part of the sector, AMC just didn’t care about those titles the same way Arclight and Landmark did (and the Specialty Consumer realized it), so now we’re finally going to have an Exhibitor (Alamo Draft House) who understands how to nurture titles like this. But with the good news of a brand like Alamo Draft House that the art film consumers trust doing the programming, there’s some caution with that brand as well. Since Sony bought Alamo Draft House they seem to have a lot of unhappy customers beefing about the way they run their theaters now. So hopefully all that is ironed out by the time we get to 2028, otherwise the Alamo Draft House brand won’t be what we need here.

Anyway, with the same expected accuracy as an Elon Musk movie review (even the ones he’s actually seen), here are some thoughts on the weekend box-office.

The Odyssey - All the talk about how tough it is to get a PLF seat (especially IMAX) is showing today in the grosses and a lot of those IMAX theaters are even or up from last week. However, this film has the usual distribution math issue on weekend #2, because the gross this weekend will only be for Friday, Saturday and Sunday instead of the Thursday inclusive gross from last weekend. That means they are starting the weekend down 15%, and because Sinners only grossed 10% of it’s reported opening weekend on Thursday and this was nearly 15%, it (appropriately) has a tougher journey home. The good news is that there’s no World Cup this Sunday and that took a little bite out of the box-office last weekend. Since our sector loves round numbers, the big question right now is ‘can weekend #2 get to $100 million?’. Looking at the way this is rolling in now, that’s certainly possible and if it’s not $100 million it’s probably going to be pretty close.

Hadestown: The Musical - It looks like Bleecker Street is really on to something here. A couple of years ago they rolled out a filmed version of Waitress (from the Broadway show) and it had some really nice grosses, finishing the theatrical run at $5.4 million. They followed that up with a filmed version of the K-Pop band Stray Kids Concert at So-Fi and moved the total gross up to $7.2 million. Now they’ve grown the base a little more, and it’s entirely possible the first weekend on this filmed Broadway show could equal the total gross from Stray Kids. And this is a nice blueprint for a way we can use the theatrical sector’s infrastructure. As much as you hear (mostly from the know nothing Ivy League MBA’s we have scattered around our business) ‘why go to a theater when you’ve got a 60” flat screen at home?’. But the fact is that most of the major megaplex’s have very good sound, and better sound than most people have at home; so when you put a TV show (or a sporting event like the World Cup games) in theaters, consumers find that attractive. Seeing something like a Broadway show in a Theater with other people is a better replication of the in person Broadway experience than it is watching at home, and the consumer is telling us there’s value here. Especially when you consider the economics of the entire proposition. Anyway, this looks very good so far and it looks like a really nice weekend of about $7 million, depending on how front loaded it is.

Motor City - Went 1600 runs from IFC and there’s nothing going on here, maybe $1.5 million over the weekend.

Her Private Hell - Went 700 runs and because of the pedigree of the film maker, there’s a couple of decent grosses in NY and LA, but it’s super soft everywhere else. Looks like about $700k right now.

The rest of the Holdovers look pretty good with no substantial new titles coming in, and the one’s that play look like they’re going to have a weekend drop around 30%, and the ones that don’t play will be closer to the usual 50%.

• And as an Ex Projectionist (who ran a lot of 70mm, including the 24 hour a day run of Return of the Jedi at the Egyptian over Memorial Day 1983, which nearly killed me), here’s a pro-tip. If you go to The Odyssey at LA Live in 70mm IMAX, stay clear of the balcony seats, it sucks up there and the picture looks like shit. But that illustrates my point, IMAX has excellent quality control measures but even their thorough process missed the idea that a silver screen doesn’t reflect up (to the balcony seats) the same way it reflects level (to the main floor) and no one thought to check the light levels in the balcony seats, just sending techs out to make sure it’s all good isn’t perfect. In IMAX’s defense, there are only 41 of these 70mm IMAX theaters World Wide and it’s entirely possible this is the only one with a balcony. It might be a complete outlier.