While I’m here each Sunday to break down all the fun bits about the weekend’s box office, I’m sure nobody needs to hear from me that Toy Story 5 took the No. 1 spot upon hitting the 2026 movie release calendar. Of course it did, and of course it broke records along the way. For instance, its $160 million is the most any movie in the franchise has made in its first three days, and by a large margin.

For me, though, the biggest mystery coming into today was how last week’s winner Disclosure Day would fare in its second weekend in release — and if it could hold off the trio of horror movies that have taken possession of the Top 5 for so long that Backrooms’ Kane Parsons has even turned 21 since then. He was 20 years old.

Take a look at the Top 10 below, per The Numbers, then we’ll get into just how monumental Toy Story 5’s debut was and if Steven Spielberg’s aliens have a long-term chance against the One Wish Willow, the liminal spaces below Clark’s furniture store and the Wayans Brothers.

Weekend Box Office: June 19-21, 2026

* denotes new release

Toy Story 5 Is The Biggest Domestic Release Of The Year So Far

So just how good is that $160 million? For one thing, it knocks The Super Mario Galaxy Movie out of the top spot for having 2026’s biggest premiere weekend. The Universal video game sequel opened to $131.7 million back in April.

As for worldwide debuts, however, Mario retains first place. Toy Story 5 added $152 million internationally for a global total of $312 million. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opened to $372.5 million, but that total included more international markets than the Pixar product, as well as Wednesday and Thursday showings.

Toy Story 5’s opening already puts it in the Top 10 of the year’s highest-grossing movies — at No. 9 behind Hoppers domestically ($166 million) and No. 9 behind The Mandalorian & Grogu globally ($321.8 million). I’d say we should expect to see Tim Allen, Tom Hanks and Joan Cusack’s animated film continue to climb those ranks.

Pixar is likely extremely happy with ticket sales this weekend, as Toy Story 5 had the second-best opening for an animated movie in the U.S. and Canada after the studio’s own Incredibles 2 ($182.6 million), as well as Pixar’s best worldwide opening of all time (excluding China) behind Inside Out 2 ($384 million).

With a budget of $250 million before marketing costs, Toy Story 5 likely needs to make around $600 million to break even, and it’s well on its way after a strong first three days and lots of summer to go.

How Toy Story 5's Premiere Compares To The Rest Of The Franchise

We know that this weekend's release was the best of the franchise, but just how did the other movies fare in comparison? Below you'll find every Toy Story movie's domestic opening-weekend pull:

• Toy Story 5 (2026): $160 million
• Toy Story 4 (2019): $120.9 million
• Toy Story 3 (2010): $110.3 million
• Toy Story 2 (1999): $80.5 million*
• Toy Story (1995): $29.1 million

*Toy Story 2 ran in one theater for five days before its wide release on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving in 1999. This total reflects its earnings through that Sunday.

Leviticus Didn’t Make The Same Splash As Other Recent Horror Flicks

As for the week’s other new releases, Leviticus failed to make the same splash as other recent horror flicks — specifically the ones from YouTubers Kane Parsons and Curry Barker — despite reviews saying it gave moviegoers “goosebumps,” and The Death of Robin Hood also was a tough draw for audiences. Those premiered at No. 8 and 9 for the week, so let’s see how critics and audiences scored those:

Disclosure Day Fights Off Obsession, For Now

As we can see from the chart, Emily Blunt’s highly regarded performance helped Disclosure Day drop only one spot in the box office Top 10, but it certainly wasn’t a runaway victory. Steven Spielberg’s fifth alien movie bested the year’s hottest horror movie by less than $3 million, falling 62% from its first weekend’s earnings.

That’s not a completely devastating drop, but with a budget of $115 million, it probably needs between $250 million and $300 million to break even. After 10 days in theaters, Disclosure Day has earned $160.4 worldwide, and losing that big of a chunk of audience makes me a tad nervous about its run.

Obsession Finally Falls Below Its Week 1 Earnings

It was certainly no surprise to me that following Toy Story 5 and Disclosure Day in the box office rankings that the rest of the Top 5 were populated by horror movies. Obsession has been the biggest surprise, earning $17.2 million in its first weekend before seeing that number jump for the next two consecutive weekends.

It’s simply unheard of, and now — after six weekends in release — Obsession’s three-day domestic total of $14.2 million is lower than its initial pull for the first time.

Global Milestones Have Been Hit

• Scary Movie crossed the $200 million benchmark this weekend, with international markets adding $104.4 million to its domestic total so far of $97.5 million for a worldwide $201.9 million.
• Masters of the Universe itself crossed into nine-digit territory, combining its North American earnings of $56.9 million with an overseas total of $45 million for a global sum of $101.9 million.

Next Week: It's A Bird, It's A Plane ...

No, it's not Superman, but it is his drunker, more jaded cousin Supergirl. The DCU antihero will fly into theaters with an expected debut of between $39 million and $51 million. First reactions were positive for Milly Alcock and for Jason Momoa as Lobo, so I'm excited to see where this falls in next week's Top 10.

We'll also see the premiere of Jackass: Best and Last, which should see between $12 million and $18 million.

Be sure to hit the theater sometime this week, then join me back here Sunday to see where everything lands.

Steven Spielberg’s aliens are back in the box office, as Disclosure Day took top honors this weekend following its debut on the 2026 movie calendar. However, I’d love for somebody to ask our new non-human friends if they see Michael Jackson moonwalking up there in the cosmos, because Michael has finally surpassed Bohemian Rhapsody to become the world's highest-grossing music biopic of all time.

Horror offerings also continued to impress, so let’s look at this week’s biggest box office wins and what we can expect from Disclosure Day and our spooky summer flicks as Toy Story 5 and more of the season’s blockbusters approach.

First, check out this weekend’s Top 10, then we’ll get into the highlights:

Weekend Box Office: June 12-14

* Denotes new release

How Far Will Disclosure Day Go In Theaters?

Disclosure Day’s three-day domestic opening fell in between projections, which ran from $40 million to $55 million, with its $44 million marking the fifth-best opening domestically for Steven Spielberg. It’s also his highest first-three-day total for an original title not based on previous IP, Deadline reports.

More than half of its worldwide earnings came from overseas markets, earning a combined $92.9 million globally. So what should we expect from the sci-fi flick with other big titles premiering soon, like Toy Story 5 next week, Supergirl and Spider-Man: Brand New Day? Looking back at Steven Spielberg’s other four alien movies, it’s pretty clear that when this filmmaker talks about us not being alone, people pay attention:

These numbers haven't been adjusted for inflation, so it's somewhat difficult to see how Disclosure Day compares to even one of the best movies of the 1970s (Close Encounters of the Third Kind, of course), but the totals earned by each one by the end of their times in theaters speaks volumes. I'd say Universal Pictures will have no problem making back the approximately $300 million it will need to break even on the movie's $115 million budget.

How Critics Rated This Week’s New Releases

The excitement for Disclosure Day has been obvious since we saw those over-the-top first reactions, and the praise continued when full reviews were released. However, based on the experiences of the staff here at CinemaBlend — and what we overheard during our own early screenings — we thought audiences’ overall reactions might be a little more divisive. Let’s take a peek at how critics’ opinions of this week’s new releases differed from moviegoers’:

The Furious is an English-language action film out of Hong Kong that got overwhelmingly positive buzz after its premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last fall. That was echoed in moviegoers' experience, as you can see above, earning enough to put the movie in the Top 10.

Stop! That! Train! earned less than its low-end projection of $3 million but was still able to steamroll its way into the 10 spot. (We should all know better than to try to stop any train the fabulous RuPaul is on.)

Woo! Michael Is Now The World’s Highest-Grossing Music Biopic

We’ve had our eye on this stat for a while, as Michael, the biopic starring Michael Jackson’s nephew Jaafar Jackson as the King of Pop, has now earned a global total of $932.2 million ($362.8 million domestic, $569.5 million international, per The Numbers), gliding past the previous record held by Bohemian Rhapsody with $910.9 million. Michael became North America’s highest-grossing biopic about a month ago after three weekends in theaters.

The movie finally premiered in Japan this weekend, and the Bad artist’s popularity there sealed the deal. The next big milestone would be to cross the $1 billion mark, which would make it just the second movie this year to do so, following The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

Scary Movies Continue Their Reign … And You Can Eat Them

Hot horror summer continued this week, as scary movies populated the three box office slots below Disclosure Day. We’re five weekends in, and Obsession has yet to drop below its Week 1 earnings. A horror movie pulling $19 million after more than a month in theaters is impressive to say the least — not to mention its domestic total was good for the No. 2 spot at the box office.

At this point there’s no doubt Curry Barker’s film is drawing repeat viewers, and I get it. I’ve wanted a rewatch basically since the credits rolled on my first viewing.

Instead, I spent my weekend box office dollars on Backrooms at the strong behest of my teenager. I definitely needed an explanation of that ending (and I agree at times I got a bit bored), but at least now I have some context for all those “You can eat them” memes she’s been sending me.

Toy Story 5 Is Coming, And Other Quick Hits To Wrap Up The Week

• Toy Story 5 is projected to earn between $150 million and $184 million when it premieres June 19, so we’ll be saying “I Knew It, I Knew You” when it takes gold in next week’s Top 10.
• I’m extremely interested to see how Leviticus fares. The upcoming horror movie stars Joe Bird (who had a pretty rough go of it in 2022’s Talk To Me) and is already Certified Fresh on Rotten Tomatoes with 95% following its January premiere at Sundance. Will this be another boon for the genre?
• Lots of hoopla is being made over Masters of the Universe falling 71% in its second weekend in release. However, Amazon MGM insists it’s not a flop, and with audiences finding the movie funnier than critics did, it should continue to bring in the bucks when people can start streaming it with a Prime Video subscription.

Be sure to hit the theater this week, then come back next Sunday to see how your dollars affected the box office.

The Wayans Brothers ensured that the horror genre continues to dominate the summer box office, as their return to the Scary Movie franchise after a quarter-century earned $55 million on its opening weekend. That’s not all though — Backrooms set another record after its shocking debut, and Obsession crossed a big milestone of its own.

This success in the horror realm unfortunately meant that Masters of the Universe saw disappointing numbers on opening weekend, earning just $29.3 million over its first three days, as blockbusters like Disclosure Day and Toy Story 5 draw nearer on the 2026 movie release schedule.

Take a look at the Top 10 chart below, per The Numbers, and then we’ll get into some context:

Weekend Box Office: June 5-7, 2026

* denotes new release

Scary Movie 6 Gets International Bump As It Sets Franchise Record

The amount earned by Scary Movie in North America got some help from international markets, nearly doubling for a global total of $105.5 million in three days. That’s great news for Miramax, who financed the movie for $30 million.

In fact, the ticket sales earned by Scary Movie in the U.S. and Canada alone make it the best debut for the franchise since the first movie premiered in 2000. Check out where it stands next to its counterparts' first weekends:

• Scary Movie (2000): $42.4 million
• Scary Movie 2 (2001): $20.5 million
• Scary Movie 3 (2003): $48.1 million
• Scary Movie IV (2006): $40.2 million
• Scary Movie V (2013): $14.2 million
• Scary Movie (2026): $55 million

The first movie leads the rest in overall global earnings with $277.2 million. Could the sixth installment eventually pass it? Time will tell.

Continuing the trend of seeing younger audiences — and the death of theater etiquette, in some moviegoers’ eyes — 62 percent of Scary Movie ticket buyers were under the age of 30, per THR. The majority of those checking out Backrooms and Obsession last week were under 35 years old.

Masters Of The Universe Does Not Have The Power

While the new horror movies may have skewed younger, Masters of the Universe catered to Gen X nostalgia as it revived the popular ‘80s cartoon to underwhelming success. The soft opening for the Nicholas Galitzine-led flick may not be as catastrophic as what’s happening to The Mandalorian and Grogu (which has earned just $293.6 million globally after three weekends), but its sub-$30 million debut is a rough start, considering Masters of the Universe is estimated to have cost around $200 million to make.

It’s going to need a long stay in theaters if it wants to break even, which is a tough ask with how strong the trio of horror movies is doing, along with big titles in the coming weeks like Disclosure Day and Toy Story 5 — the latter of which was bolstered by the release of the delightful new Taylor Swift single “I Knew It, I Knew You” for its soundtrack.

How Critics And Audiences Rated The New Releases

Word-of-mouth advertising can definitely help a movie’s longevity, especially if audiences enjoy a movie that was negatively reviewed by critics. After six movies, it’s come to be expected that critics are pretty harsh on the Scary Movie franchise, while Masters of the Universe also fared better in the eyes of the moviegoers. Let’s take a look at the new releases’ Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore grades:

Backrooms Sets Another Record; Obsession Crosses Big Milestone

The wins keep coming for the YouTuber-helmed Backrooms and Obsession. Despite the former’s 68% drop from opening weekend, it still earned $25.9 million domestically, and adding in international numbers, its global total stands at $195.9 million.

That means that after just 10 days in theaters, Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has become A24’s highest-grossing release worldwide, beating Marty Supreme’s $191 million.

Not to be outdone, Obsession crossed the $200 million mark globally after four weekends in release, accumulating $224.8 million. That makes it Focus Features’ highest-grossing title of all time, beating 2019’s Downton Abbey ($194.6M worldwide). And let’s remember, Obsession cost less than $1 million to make.

After increasing its weekend-over-weekend audience for the past two weeks, Curry Barker’s film finally started to backslide, but to a comically low degree. Obsession lost just 7% of its ticket sales between its third and fourth weekends, which means this week’s $25.6 million is still higher than both its first ($17.2 million) and second ($24 million) weekends in release.

What Can We Expect From Disclosure Day’s Upcoming Premiere?

Lots of people, myself included, are highly anticipating Steven Spielberg’s Disclosure Day, which hits theaters on Friday, June 12, so how will it shake up the box office rankings? According to Box Office Theory, the sci-fi movie is projected to draw between $40 million and $55 million in its first three days.

That should be enough for the top spot, but the rest of the Top 5 could see some moves, given how close this week’s finishes were.

Next Week Could Be Michael’s Week

For the past few weeks, we’ve been watching Michael’s steady climb en route to take the title of highest-grossing music biopic in the world away from Bohemian Rhapsody, and it looks like that time has come. The film currently sits at $888 million globally and needs only $23 million more to surpass the 2018 Freddie Mercury story.

On June 12, Michael will finally premiere in Japan, and given the King of Pop’s large fanbase there, the movie is practically guaranteed to storm past Bohemian Rhapsody’s $911 million global total.

Be sure to hit the theater sometime this week to take in one of these movies, then come back next Sunday to see where everything falls in the Top 10.

This weekend’s box office may be tempting you to check your calendar (and your thermostat). Because, at a time of year when we’re typically settling in for the year’s biggest superhero flicks and summer blockbusters, it’s two horror movies that are dominating the domestic box office. Kane Parsons’ Backrooms and Curry Barker’s Obsession aren’t just any horror flicks, either — they’re low-budget films directed by YouTube stars, and this weekend they broke records while putting The Mandalorian and Grogu to shame.

Backrooms premiered on the 2026 movie schedule to $81.5 million — light years ahead of projections. (honestly, don’t even look at the number I reported last week). Meanwhile, Obsession saw another unprecedented increase in audience in its third weekend.

Take a look at the chart below (per The Numbers), then we’ll break down what it all means:

Weekend Box Office: May 29-31, 2026

* denotes new release

Backrooms Sets Records In Shocking Debut

Let’s consider what a big deal Backrooms’ $81.5 million opening is. So, last week, The Mandalorian and Grogu premiered to $82 million in significantly more theaters. One of these films cost $10 million to make; the other, $165 million. Pedro Pascal’s Star Wars movie comes from one of the most popular film franchises of all time, while Backrooms is a found-footage horror that critics struggled to describe in their reviews.

That's not even to mention that The Mandalorian and Grogu took a nasty 69% dive in its second weekend.

What this means for the movie industry as a whole remains to be seen — nearly 85% of Backrooms' audience was under age 35 (RIP theater etiquette) — but some things are certain. According to Variety:

• Backrooms has A25’s largest opening weekend ever (beating Civil War’s $25.5 million in 2024.
• It is the biggest debut in history for original horror.
• It’s the best start for a first-time filmmaker on a non-franchise film.
• Kane Parsons, 20, is the youngest director to have the No. 1 film at the box office (beating Chronicle’s Josh Trank, who was 27 when the film debuted in 2012 with $22 million).

It even crossed into nine-figure global territory, as the new A24 horror movie added $36.5 million overseas, giving it a worldwide 3-day premiere of $118 million.

What In The One Wish Willow Is Going On With Obsession?

It was nearly unprecedented to see the jump that Obsession made between its first two weekends of release, so there’s absolutely no reason other than sorcery that this movie would see another increase after three weekends. And yet, here we are. The movie that has us deep-diving into Nikki theories and debating that ending has now crossed the $100 million threshold in North America after seeing a 10% increase in this weekend’s box office earnings:

Obsession is the first movie since 1982’s E.T. The Extraterrestrial to see ticket sales increase in its second and third weekends, Deadline reports. This kind of unprecedented success is very interesting for YouTube's aspiring filmmakers, especially given what Backrooms was able to accomplish and how well Mark Fischbach (aka Markiplier) did earlier this year with Iron Lung.

The YouTuber self-financed Iron Lung, directed and starred in it, earning $50 million against a $3 million budget. (I saw it at the behest of my 15-year-old, and it was quite the mindbending experience. And so, so bloody.)

There’s Room For Everyone In The Horror Space

I wrote last week that I was concerned Backrooms might suffer from Obsession’s growing audience, thinking if horror fans had to choose one over the other, they might go with the super buzzy title. Wrong! Clearly Backrooms did not suffer, and neither did Obsession. Are people out there doing the Backsession double feature?

Now, I’m definitely going to have my eye on what happens next weekend with another upcoming horror movie joining the mix. Scary Movie, the sixth installment of the parody series, hits theaters this weekend, so how will horror-loving audiences split themselves this time?

The Breadwinner Loses Its Bread After Bad Reviews

The horror movies may not have cannibalized each other at the box office this weekend, but they certainly didn’t do any favors to the other new releases. In The Breadwinner’s case, though, that might have been more its own fault, as reviews were tepid at best for comedian Nate Bargatze’s big-screen debut. Low-end projections had the movie making around $19 million, but it finished the weekend with an estimated $7.5 million. Let’s see how critics and audiences rated this week’s releases:

Audiences clearly found a lot more to like about The Breadwinner than critics, so maybe word-of-mouth advertising will keep it from falling too far next weekend. Pressure also got high marks, and I wouldn't be surprised to see moviegoers spending D-Day with Brendan Fraser and Andrew Scott, learning about the weather forecast that changed the world.

So what new releases will these movies be up against?

Can Scary Movie 6 Keep The Spooky Vibes Alive?

Scary Movie 6 leads the projections for next weekend, but does He-Man have the power to break up the horrorfest? Here's what Box Office Theory predicts for the upcoming releases:

• Scary Movie 6: $41 million to $52 million
• Masters of the Universe: $25 million to $35 million
• The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act: $10 million to $16 million

We're also still on Michael watch, as the Michael Jackson biopic inches closer to surpassing Bohemian Rhapsody ($911 million) for the highest-grossing music biopic of all time globally. This week we're at $846.3 million, and with Japan's premiere coming June 12, I think it's only a matter of weeks now.

Things have been pretty wild at the box office lately, and it's only going to get better with so many big releases still to come. Find me every Sunday for a look at the top 10 movies and a breakdown of the numbers.

Star Wars fans have been waiting quite a long time to see a galaxy far, far away make its return to the big screen. However, as The Mandalorian and Grogu hit the 2026 movie calendar as this year’s Memorial Day tentpole — taking the No. 1 spot with $82 million from Friday to Sunday — its achievement was somewhat overshadowed by the horror flick Obsession, which saw an increase in ticket sales over its second weekend in release.

The wish fulfillment horror flick from Curry Barker brought in $22.4 million domestically from May 22-24 after opening to $16.1 million, which itself was more than double the projections. It’s nearly unprecedented for a movie that’s already in wide release to see a 30% increase in its second weekend.

Take a look at the chart below, and then we’ll break down all of the Memorial Day weekend fun.

Weekend Box Office: May 22-24, 2026

* denotes new release

The Mandalorian And Grogu Officially Becomes Star Wars’ Lowest Debut

Pedro Pascal took his Star Wars character to the big screen, and with some help from “Baby Yoda,” The Mandalorian and Grogu opened to $81.9 million over its first three days, per The Numbers, and is projected to finish the four-day weekend at just under $100 million. This puts it on the lower end of projections and confirms fears of it having the franchise’s lowest opening weekend ever.

Solo: A Star Wars Story from 2018 previously held the record, opening to $84 million in the U.S. and Canada before finishing its run with just $393 million. Its budget, however, was in the range of $300 million, while The Mandalorian and Grogu only cost around $165 million.

I’d say Jon Favreau’s latest film has a better chance of breaking even (or at least losing less money) than Solo, but for a franchise that’s used to seeing ticket sales reach the billion-dollar point, its theatrical run is going to need to have some long legs to not be seen as a failure.

Fans Are Obsessed With Obsession

Someone needs to track down Curry Barker and see if he’s got a One Wish Willow of his own, with the sorcery that Obsession has performed on the box office.

After debuting last week at No. 3, the horror flick climbed a spot by increasing its ticket sales by an astounding 30% weekend over weekend. That’s the third-biggest second-weekend jump ever for a movie that played in more than 2,000 theaters and didn’t debut on or around Christmas. (Sound of Freedom and Mother’s Day were the others, per Scott Mendelson.)

Obsession’s domestic pull now stands at an estimated $52.8 million (with another $6K projected to come Monday). When you add the $21 million it’s gotten from international markets, Obsession has made approximately $74 million globally — a huge win for Focus Features, which reportedly paid $15 million to release the movie that was made for under $1 million.

How Critics And Audiences Ranked This Week’s New Releases

Obsession’s success proved unfortunate for this week’s new horror offering Passenger, especially with that flick’s tepid reviews. Let’s see how everyone ranked these new releases:

How Memorial Day 2026 Compares To Past Holiday Weekends

Last year was certainly one for the record books, with Lilo & Stitch combining with Mission: Impossible – Final Reckoning for a four-day total of $326.7 million, per Deadline. This year put up a good number, comparatively. Let’s take a look at the four-day domestic totals of post-COVID Memorial Day four-day weekends (and the movies that led them):

• 2026: $221 million (The Mandalorian and Grogu)
• 2025: $327 million (Lilo & Stitch)
• 2024: $132 million (Furiosa)
• 2023: $204 million (The Little Mermaid)
• 2022: $224 million (Top Gun: Maverick)

Will Obsession Continue To Affect New Horror Releases?

After this week’s surprising numbers from Obsession, I have to wonder if the upcoming horror movie Backrooms might lose some of its audience to that as well. Deadline projects that the creepypasta-inspired film coming from A24 will see around $20 million, while Box Office Theory predicted earlier this month the numbers would be between $25 million and $33 million.

Comedian Nate Bargatze, meanwhile, could offer some counter programming to those who don’t like Star Wars or horror. His comedy The Breadwinner is estimated to make between $19 million and $27 million, while Brendan Fraser’s D-Day thriller Pressure is reportedly looking at something between $3.5 million and $7 million.

Other Notes To Wrap The Weekend

• Michael’s quest to overtake Bohemian Rhapsody as the biggest global music biopic of all time continues, and after four weekends, the Michael Jackson movie holds a global total of $782.4 million. Remember, the number to beat is $911 million.
• Is God Is dropped out of the Top 10 in its second weekend, earning $886,000, which is a 60% drop from its first three days.
• My family will be adding to the final Monday box office numbers. Looking for a good horror movie to see with our teen daughter, I cast my vote for Passenger, while my husband leaned more toward Obsession. I guess this week’s box office made that decision for us, and man I hate to lose.

I’m really excited to see what The Mandalorian and Grogu does in its second weekend, and your guess is as good as mine regarding Obsession’s third weekend in release. Will these two continue to dominate, or could we get a little shakeup? I’ll be back here next Sunday to talk it all out!

Well, well, well, the King of Pop is back on top of the Box Office after four weeks in theaters, putting its newer competition to shame with $26.1 million as it inches closer to becoming the world’s biggest biopic of all time. The Devil Wears Prada 2, meanwhile, continued its confident prance past another global milestone, while Mortal Kombat II watched the life drain from its health bar. One more thing — what on earth happened to Billie Eilish?

There were no big new releases from the 2026 movie schedule this weekend ahead of Memorial Day, but Obsession from Blumhouse and Focus Features certainly made its mark as one of the weekend’s best.

Let’s take a look at the Top 10 chart, then break down some highlights below.

Weekend Box Office: May 15-17, 2026

* denotes new release

Michael Jackson Biopic Continues Its Climb To History

What a “Smooth Criminal” that Michael is, sliding right past the films that battled so fiercely for the top two spots last week to steal back No. 1. Through four weekends, the Jaafar Jackson-led flick has earned $282.8 million domestically, per The Numbers, and when combined with the $421.1 million from international markets, that’s $703.9 million.

Bohemian Rhapsody better get ready, because we may soon have a new champion, my friend. The Freddie Mercury film holds the current top spot for world’s biggest music biopic, thanks to its $911 million worldwide haul, but that doesn’t seem out of reach for Michael.

The Devil Wears Prada 2 And Obsession Have Strong Showings

Michael wasn’t the only film to cross a global milestone this weekend. Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway’s quotable sequel may have dropped to second place for the first time in its theatrical run but, after three weekends, The Devil Wears Prada 2 crossed the half-billion dollar mark, with worldwide box office earnings of $546.2 million.

Last week, I wrote that new releases weren’t likely to place in the Top 3, and Obsession put me in my place with a debut of $16.1 million domestic and $7 million international for a worldwide total of $23.1 million. I will definitely be on the lookout for any cursed objects coming my way from those I may have scorned.

Part of the reason for the strong start is due to Mortal Kombat II taking a dive, but that’s not to undermine Obsession’s accomplishment — the horror flick more than doubled the $7 million projections for opening weekend. Critics had high praise for Obsession and, in fact, let’s take a look at how they and the audience scored this week’s new releases:

Obsession’s impressive opening is a good sign that word-of-mouth advertising will keep it in the Top 10 for a bit, although Billie Eilish’s new concert movie is proof that that’s not always the case.

Billie Eilish’s 3D Concert Flick Falls Hard (And Not Soft) Out Of Top 10 In Second Weekend

Billie Eilish — Hit Me Hard and Soft: The Tour (Live in 3D) enjoyed an opening weekend of $7.5 million in the U.S. and Canada to finish at No. 5 at the Box Office last week. However, after 10 days, the party is most certainly over, as the James Cameron-directed concert movie earned just $800,000 over the past three days — a fall of 89% all the way to 14th place.

Now, I understand that concert films are frontloaded, with the most passionate fans buying tickets on opening weekend. However, with James Cameron attached as director and his use of 3D to film the movie, I’d expect Hit Me Hard and Soft to have piqued the interest of more casual fans as well. I’d also expect — as we saw with Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour Movie — for die-hard fans to make repeat trips to see the icon on the big screen.

That doesn’t seem to be the case when looking at the theatrical releases of Taylor Swift and Beyoncé’s concert movies in the first two weeks:

So yes, even Taylor Swift saw a big dip in her numbers over the second weekend, but neither hers nor Beyoncé’s with Renaissance was as drastic as Billie Eilish’s. There’s also the fact that 3D filming ain’t cheap, and these numbers don’t make me optimistic that she can make back the estimated $50 million she’d need to break even on a reported budget of $20 million plus marketing and promotion.

Who’s Ready For The Mandalorian And Grogu?

Next weekend is what a lot of Star Wars fans have been waiting for, due to the premiere of The Mandalorian and Grogu. Despite some troubling early projections for Pedro Pascal’s latest project — and divided first reactions from critics — Box Office Theory is now expecting it to bring in anywhere from $81 million to $96 million from next Friday to Sunday. Here are the average projections for all of the May 22 new releases:

• The Mandalorian and Grogu: $90 million
• Passenger: $6 million
• I Love Boosters: $4 million

A Few Other Notes To Wrap The Weekend

• Mortal Kombat II dropped from second place to fourth on its sophomore weekend, attracting 65% fewer movie lovers.
• The Sheep Detectives, meanwhile, lost only 38% of its weekend-over-weekend audience, proving that people love sheep puns.
• As for the varied opinions of CinemaBlend's writers about the book-to-screen adaptation, I thought the novel Three Bags Full was funnier and more charming. Corey Chichizola says it’s a must-watch for anyone dealing with grief, and Mack Rawden thought it was baaaaaad (but thinks you should see it anyway).

Regardless of which big-screen item you decide to see this week, let’s meet back here next week to talk about Star Wars and more.

There’s an image I can’t seem to get out of my head since checking out this weekend’s box office numbers, and that’s of Meryl Streep nut-punching Karl Urban, Mortal Kombat-style, accompanied — of course — by the video game’s “Finish him!” voiceover. The box office fight might not have gotten physical, but it was a close one, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 maintaining the top spot over the video game sequel in a battle that was nearly too close to call. We’ll have to see how those dollar amounts shake out when they become final on Monday.

Possibly more impressive, however, was the latest record broken by Michael, the hit 2026 movie schedule entry starring the King of Pop’s nephew, Jaafar Jackson.

Take a look at the Top 10 list for the past three days, then we can break down all of the numbers.

Weekend Box Office: May 8-10, 2026

* denotes new release

Mortal Kombat II Loses The Battle Of The Sequels, Settling For Second Place In Its Debut

Mortal Kombat II earned $40 million in its first three days domestically, which falls on the lower end of projections. Ultimately, that wasn’t good enough to dethrone The Devil Wears Prada 2, which fell just 44% from its opening three days to finish with an estimated $43 million.

Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep’s sequel has now earned $144.8 million domestically, and international markets have added generously to that, giving the flick $433.2 million globally after 10 days. That’s good enough, per The Numbers, to surpass Hoppers for the fifth-best global release this year.

The video game adaptation, meanwhile, also got some help from outside North America, adding $23 million for a worldwide total of $63 million. Hopefully, its positive reception from audiences (more on that further down) and critics’ reviews lauding one scene-stealing performance can keep it in theaters long enough to earn back its reported $80 million budget. ScreenRant reports that after marketing and promotion costs, the sequel’s break-even point is around $200 million.

Mortal Kombat II Outperforms Its Predecessor

Johnny Cage may have been no match for the Devil, but the sequel's $43 million is close to double what 2021’s Mortal Kombat earned. That movie, also from Simon McQuoid and starring much of the same cast, earned $23.3 million, though we have to remember that people hadn’t fully returned to theaters that year, and Mortal Kombat was given a simultaneous streaming release on HBO Max.

Mortal Kombat II has a lot going for it, and it should easily surpass the $84.4 million its predecessor made worldwide by the end of its run.

New Releases Round Out The Top 5

The Sheep Detectives and Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft — The Tour were able to push The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Project Hail Mary out of the Top 5. The Hugh Jackman book-to-screen adaptation brought in $15.9 million, which was on the higher end of projections from a week ago. Billie Eilish’s 3D flick, meanwhile, was only slightly under experts’ predictions with $7.5 million.

Both got international boosts, too, with the James Cameron-directed concert film garnering $12.6 million outside of the U.S. and Canada for a global total of $20.1 million — in good shape to recoup its reported $20 million budget. The Sheep Detectives, meanwhile, got an extra $12.1 million to finish its first weekend with $28 million worldwide toward its $75 million budget.

Let’s take a look at what critics and moviegoers thought of this week’s movies:

It’s impressive to see The Sheep Detectives and Billie Eilish scoring in the 90th percentile with both critics and audiences, and Mortal Kombat II seems to be a much bigger hit with moviegoers than critics. It will definitely be interesting to see how these fare next week — especially with Karl Urban’s fantasy fighting film having a pretty good chance of trading in silver for gold.

Michael Moonwalks Past Freddy Mercury

All of the new releases aside, Michael continues its box office dominance, falling just one spot — and not by much, either — as it brought in another $36.5 million in its third weekend. That gives the Michael Jackson biopic $240.5 million, meaning it has officially surpassed Bohemian Rhapsody’s $216.7 million to become North America’s highest-grossing music biopic of all time.

Globally, Michael crossed the $500 million milestone and, while it stands as the second-best music biopic of all time on a worldwide scale, it still has a ways to go before taking that crown from Queen. The 2018 Freddy Mercury movie ended its run with $910.8 million, per Billboard, while MJ’s story so far totals $577.4 million.

Hokum Has A Decent Second Weekend, But It’s Bad News For The Other Sophomores

Hokum’s positive reception appears to have garnered it some goodwill with moviegoers, as it fell just 49% from its debut weekend. Sure, it dropped to eighth place with just $3.3 million but, so far it’s made $12.5 million, and with a reported budget of just $5 million, that’s not too shabby. It’s also got a stronger chance of more Top 10 appearances than Deep Water or Animal Farm.

Neither of these second-week releases managed to reach the million-dollar mark. Renny Harlin’s survival film dropped one spot and 63% to earn $780K, which puts it at $3.7 million after two weekends toward its $40 million budget. But even that’s not as dire as what happened to Animal Farm.

The George Orwell adaptation dropped from No. 6 to No. 10, with its $663K a whopping 80% plunge from its premiere weekend. It looks like this animated flick is stalling out at $5 million toward its $35 million budget.

What Does Next Weekend Look Like?

New movies hitting theaters May 15 don’t look like they’ll challenge for the Top 3, which makes that an interesting battle, with just $7 million separating gold from bronze this weekend. There are some highly anticipated offerings, though, including the upcoming horror movie Obsession, which holds a 97% Rotten Tomatoes score after thrilling and disturbing audiences at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. That’s projected to open to about $7 million, per Box Office Theory.

We’ve also got Guy Ritchie’s In the Grey and Is God Is, a thriller with an impressive cast that includes Kara Young, Janelle Monáe, Erika Alexander, Vivica A. Fox and Sterling K. Brown. Which of the above movies that we’ve discussed this week is piquing your interests? Get to the theater, then come back next Sunday to see what happens to that Top 10 list.

Anyone who checked out last week’s box office numbers, when Michael Jackson told Mario to beat it, may be shocked to see just how much the Top 10 list has changed. Five of the movies that hit the 2026 movie schedule this weekend have claimed spots, giving the list below a major overhaul, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 slaying the competition as if it were a runway on fashion week. I’ll get into some interesting reasons why this debut was so significant, especially for Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt.

Despite relinquishing their previous box office spots, Michael crossed another milestone this week after moonwalking over records in its first three days, and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie surpassed $400 million domestically after five weekends.

Check out the chart below, and then we’ll break down this week’s highlights.

Weekend Box Office: May 1-3, 2026

* denotes new release

The Devil Wears Prada 2 Makes That Box Office Crown Look Good

The Devil Wears Prada 2 didn’t need Crisco or fishing line to slide right into that No. 1 spot at the box office this weekend, earning $77 million domestically, per The Numbers, as it strutted right past the $66 million projections from last week. That gives Miranda Priestly and company the fourth-best start of 2026:

1. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: $131 million (April 1)
2. Michael: $97.5 million (May 24)
3. Project Hail Mary: $80 million (March 20)
4. The Devil Wears Prada 2: $77 million (May 1)

Meryl Streep and Anne Hathaway’s reunion picked up another $156.6 million from markets outside of the U.S. and Canada to earn a worldwide total of $233.6 million. Not only did that beat out the rest of the week’s movies, but it stomped all over its 2006 predecessor.

The Devil Wears Prada: Then And Now

This weekend’s $77 million premiere for the sequel eclipsed The Devil Wears Prada’s 2006 domestic box office pull of $27.5 million. In fact, the original movie that has had us quoting Miranda Priestly, Nigel Kipling and the rest of the Runway gang for 20 years ended its global run with $326 million. With The Devil Wears Prada 2’s worldwide opening of $233.6 million, it’s already 72% of the way to earning more than the original.

The current movie does, however, have a bigger budget to make back. The first movie was reportedly made for around $40 million, while The Devil Wears Prada 2 carried a much larger price tag of $100 million (most of which, according to The New York Times, went to cast salaries). Compare them all you like, but there’s no arguing they’re both box office wins.

No Marvel? No Problem.

There’s another interesting metric when it comes to this weekend’s box office winner. This is the first time a film marketed toward women has won the first weekend of May, Deadline points out, with the summer opener typically dominated by Marvel. The MCU’s Avengers: Doomsday was originally scheduled for this weekend before being pushed to December. Here are some past examples, per Box Office Mojo:

• Thunderbolts*: $76 million (May 2, 2025)
• Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3: $118.4 million (May 5, 2023)
• Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness: $185 million (May 6, 2022)
• Captain America: Civil War: $179.1 million (May 6, 2016)
• Avengers: Age of Ultron: $191.2 million (May 1, 2015)
• Iron Man 3: $174.1 million (May 3, 2013)
• The Avengers: $207.4 million (May 4, 2012)
• Iron Man 2: 128.1 million (May 7, 2010)
• Iron Man: $98.6 million (May 2, 2008)

The Devil Wears Prada 2 had no problem filling those big shoes, as its global $233.6 million also reportedly served as the biggest opening weekend ever for Meryl Streep and Emily Blunt, respectively beating Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again’s $90 million from 2018, and Oppenheimer’s $176 million opening in 2023.

Michael And Mario Are Still Going Strong

Michael and The Super Mario Galaxy Movie may have dropped a spot to the almighty Devil sequel, but there’s no reason for concern. The Michael Jackson biopic earned another $54 million domestically — falling just 44% from last weekend — for a domestic total so far of $183.8. Add an additional $240.1 million internationally to cross the $400 million mark with a worldwide total of $423.9 million.

Deadline reports that by the end of Monday, May 4, Michael will become Lionsgate’s biggest domestic title post-pandemic, knocking off John Wick: Chapter 4 ($187.1 million).

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie surpassed $400 million domestically this weekend, now standing at $402.7 million and nearing the $900 million mark globally with $894.2 million.

What Critics And Audiences Thought Of This Weekend’s Other Premieres

There were several other movies that premiered this weekend, and while they might not have been as big as The Devil Wears Prada 2, they certainly mixed things up in the Top 10. Hokum may have gotten a push from positive reviews for its 5th-place finish, so let’s take a look at how all of this week’s premieres scored on Rotten Tomatoes and CinemaScore:

Other than Animal Farm — Andy Serkis’ animated book-to-screen adaptation of the George Orwell classic starring Seth Rogen — audiences seemed pleased with the weekend’s offerings. We’ll have to see which ones can hang on with summer blockbusters on the way.

What Competition Will Next Week’s Releases Offer?

So what titles are coming next weekend that might challenge The Devil Wears Prada 2 or possibly break the stronghold that Michael, Mario and Project Hail Mary have on the Top 5? Mortal Kombat II, starring The Boys’ Karl Urban is on deck, as well as another book adaptation in The Sheep Detectives, which boasts a stacked cast and bonkers trailer.

The upcoming video game adaptation is expected to make between $40 million and $50 million, per Box Office Theory, which would have it competing for the top spot. The Sheep Detectives, meanwhile, is expecting $10 million to $16 million.

Of course, we’re also already looking ahead a couple of weeks to The Mandalorian and Grogu. The Star Wars spinoff is looking at anywhere between $71 million and $100 million when it arrives in theaters on May 22, and at face value that seems like a win. However, in a franchise that’s used to films that break into the billions by the end of their runs, will The Mandalorian and Grogu be seen as a failure?

Be sure to check in every Sunday so we can break down the box office and what the numbers all mean.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie had a strong few weeks in the top spot of the box office, but our favorite video game plumbers proved no match for Michael Jackson. The King of Pop told Mario and Luigi to “Beat It,” as the new musical biopic Michael moonwalked its way to No. 1 this weekend — shattering box office records along the way. With $97 million in domestic ticket sales, Michael holds the best first weekend ever for a biopic.

The Jason Segel and Samara Weaving-starring comedy thriller Over Your Dead Body also had its debut, and with some big titles coming to May's theatrical releases, let’s break down what all of these numbers mean.

Check out the domestic Top 10 below:

Weekend Box Office: April 24-26, 2026

* denotes new release

Michael’s domestic earnings of $97 million (per The Numbers) beat the previous record-holder, 2015’s Straight Outta Compton, which earned $60 million in its first three days, and 2018’s Bohemian Rhapsody, which opened to $51 million. It was the biggest opening on the 2026 movie calendar so far behind The Super Mario Galaxy Movie ($131 million) and the best of the year for live-action flicks behind Project Hail Mary’s $80.5 million, Variety reports.

The records don’t stop outside the confines of North America, either, as Michael added $120 million in international markets for a global total of $217 million. That’s without Korea, which has pushed the opening to May 13, and Japan, which is releasing the biopic in June.

That $217 million puts Michael at No. 6 overall for 2026 worldwide releases, according to Box Office Mojo, behind Wuthering Heights’ $241.7 million — after one weekend. It was also the biggest Imax debut for a musical biopic, with $24.4 million of that worldwide total coming from the supersized screen.

This is obviously great news for Lionsgate, who split the $200 million production budget with Universal (the international distributor) and Michael Jackson’s estate, who footed the bill for reshoots of the movie’s ending due to legal restrictions. Michael is the production company’s biggest release since 2015’s The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2, which debuted to $102 million.

Now the Lionsgate brass are likely wondering if Michael might become its most successful title of all time. A different Hunger Games chapter currently holds that honor — Catching Fire from 2013, which earned $865 million globally by the end of its theatrical run.

A month ago, Michael was on track for a $150 million global debut, per Deadline, and despite critics taking issues with the movie’s lack of a deep dive into the artist himself, hype for the movie continued to rise, and fans apparently loved the celebration of the King of Pop’s music — especially as portrayed by Michael’s nephew Jafaar Jackson.

Rotten Tomatoes shows the disagreement between critics and fans, with Michael holding a Tomatometer score of just 38%, compared to the fans’ Popcornmeter score of 97%. CinemaScore has moviegoers grading the movie an A-. How long can the king maintain the throne?

Super Mario Bros. And Project Hail Mary Get Big Wins Despite Slip

This weekend may have meant the end of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie’s run at the top, but with $21.2 million domestic and another $36.6 internationally, it surpassed the $800 million mark globally, now holding $831 million after four weekends. Project Hail Mary tells a similar story as it drops to No. 3. After six weekends it has hit its own global milestone of $613.3 million. Amaze! Amaze! Amaze!

Things were less bright for the movies that fell below it on the chart. Over Your Dead Body debuted to a lower-than-expected No. 8 with $1.4 million. The reviews for Jason Segel and Samara Weaving’s movie of marital mayhem were generally positive — and audiences gave it 80% on RT, compared to the critics’ 69%. We’ll have to see what word-of-mouth advertising can do for Jorma Taccone’s funny, gory action-thriller.

Can The Devil Wear Prada 2 Help Mother Mary?

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy had a pretty disappointing first three days, but in its second weekend, the reimagined monster movie managed to bring in another $5.6 million, falling just 58% from its release. It’s also getting a nice boost internationally, boasting a worldwide total of $65.5 million, and with a reported budget of $22 million, that sounds like a win to me.

This was technically also Mother Mary’s second week in theaters, though this was its first in wide release. Anne Hathaway’s psychosexual pop thriller earned $1.3 million in the U.S. and Canada, which was good for 9th place, giving it $1.5 million after two weekends. With a reported budget of $20 million (before marketing), it’s not going to be easy to break even on this A24 offering. Could The Devil Wears Prada 2 possibly give it a boost?

The long-awaited sequel starring Anne Hathaway and Meryl Streep hits theaters next weekend, reportedly on track for a $66 million debut. Is it possible moviegoers will opt for the Hathaway double feature — “Mother Prada,” if you will? “The Devil Wears Mary”? I’ll work on it.

I’m excited to see what happens next week when Michael Jackson wants to be startin' somethin' with Miranda Priestly, so meet me back here for another box office breakdown.

It was no surprise that The Super Mario Galaxy Movie maintained its stronghold on the box office this weekend, bringing in another $35 million in its third weekend in theaters. However, that doesn’t mean the milestones have stopped coming, as the video game adaptation sequel has officially become the biggest movie of the year worldwide. Mario, Luigi and the gang triple-jumped their way to global earnings totaling $747.5 million, surpassing the Chinese sports flick Pegasus 3’s $641.1 million.

Meanwhile, Project Hail Mary remains stellar after a month in theaters, and Lee Cronin’s The Mummy got a nice international boost but settled for a third-place opening in the U.S. and Canada. Check out the Top 10 chart below.

Weekend Box Office: April 17-19, 2026

LW = last week’s chart position; THTRS = number of screens; * denotes new release

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Continues To Trail Its Predecessor

No new release on the 2026 movie schedule was strong enough to dethrone our favorite Italian plumbers this week, as The Super Mario Galaxy Movie continued its domination of the box office. It now has a commanding lead over the rest of the year’s global releases, according to Box Office Mojo, with $392.2 million of its $747.5 million total coming from international markets.

We’ve been tracking the week-by-week comparisons with its 2023 predecessor, The Super Mario Bros. Movie and, unsurprisingly, the sequel failed for the third week in a row to rake in as much cash as its predecessor domestically. The breakdown is as follows (per The Numbers):

The 2026 sequel may not be seeing numbers as high as the 2023 blockbuster, but its success is nothing to sneeze at, particularly since The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Project Hail Mary have combined forces to put the movie industry on track to surpass $9 billion in domestic ticket sales for the first time in nearly a decade.

That dynamic duo gives the box office a strong start with some big projects coming down the line, including upcoming Marvel movies like Spider-Man: Brand New Day and Avengers: Doomsday; a new Star Wars flick, The Mandalorian & Grogu; Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey; Dune: Part Three; and more.

Lee Cronin’s The Mummy Settles For Third

The latest of the Universal Monster remakes performed as expected with its $13.5 million opener. While this movie isn’t seeing quite as much bank as Cronin’s previous directorial effort (Evil Dead Rise opened with $23.5 million, coincidentally premiering against The Super Mario Bros. Movie in its third weekend), it saw a nice international boost.

Totaling $34 million worldwide, The Mummy is already on its way to making back its reported $22 million budget (which is calculated without marketing and distribution costs). I’m interested to see how its second weekend goes and what kind of longevity the horror flick has, particularly with its mixed reviews.

The biggest complaint about Lee Cronin’s The Mummy is that it’s not really a mummy movie, which harkens back to last year’s Wolf Man interpretation, which — as we said in CinemaBlend’s review of Wolf Man — wasn’t really a werewolf movie. That flick finished its theatrical run with $34.1 million globally, with a similarly small budget, so The Mummy has already beat that.

Week 2 News: Faces Of Death Shows No Signs Of Life, And You, Me & Tuscany Is Barely Hanging On

After a disappointing debut in fourth place, You, Me & Tuscany fell another spot to No. 5 this week, dropping 51% weekend over weekend. It’s disheartening news for the rom-com — and for the genre in general — particularly since it has a 93% score from Rotten Tomatoes’ audience. How is word-of-mouth advertising not working here? Are moviegoers too good for Regé-Jean Page’s bare chest?

At least Halle Bailey’s movie didn’t drop off as much as Faces of Death. The meta remake premiered at No. 7 last week but dropped out of the Top 10 altogether after losing 82% of its weekend-to-weekend audience. It brought in just $300,000 domestically from Friday to Sunday for just under $2.5 million over 10 days. I don’t see it making back its reported $7.4 million budget.

The Drama continues a relatively strong run, with another $4.8 million contributing to its worldwide earnings of $81.8 million after three weekends.

I’m looking forward to seeing how next week shakes out, especially with the upcoming wide release of Mother Mary, which earned $168,000 from just five theaters this weekend. Reviews for Anne Hathaway’s psychosexual pop thriller have me excited for it and, hey, speaking of (the king of) pop and “Thriller,” next week will also see the release of Michael, the upcoming musical biopic about Michael Jackson. Stay tuned to see where the new releases fall.

The movie release calendar in any given year often telegraphs box office expectations, and this weekend offered a perfect example. Even thought Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie debuted last week, there was no thinking that the film was going to be a one-and-done performer, even with the primarily negative response from critics, and studios made plans accordingly. Kat Coiro's You, Me & Tuscany and Daniel Goldhaber's Faces Of Death arrived as counterprogramming (much like Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama did 10 days ago), but there was never any doubt that the new Nintendo feature would repeat as #1 in the domestic Top 10.

In the past three days, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie successfully crossed two more milestones – both at home and abroad – but just like last Sunday, there are lingering questions if it will be able to match the blockbuster performance of its 2023 predecessor. Scope out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

For The Second Weekend In A Row, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Underperforms Compared To The Super Mario Bros. Movie

When the box office reporting came in for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie last weekend, it was mostly good news with a sprinkle of bad. As expected, the new video game adaptation set a new high water mark for box office debuts, earning $131.7 million by the time final tabulations came in... but it was notable that the film underperformed compared to the opening numbers for Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Bros. Movie (which made $146.4 million).

Seven days later, we're seeing something similar play out with the weekend-to-weekend box office comparison: The Super Mario Bros. Movie remain a powerhouse in the wake of its release, with ticket sales falling just 37 percent in its sophomore Friday-to-Sunday, earning $92.3 million and bringing its domestic total up to $353.2 million. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie is lagging behind all three of those results, as ticket sales fell 48 percent, it earned an estimated $69 million (per The Numbers), and it has seen its domestic total to date rise to $308.1 million.

The results are undeniably huge and the movie will be recorded as a massive box office win for Nintendo, Illumination, Universal Pictures and the theatrical industry, but simultaneously, this is not exactly the trajectory that any franchise wants from a second installment. The response to the film has been weaker across the board, from the aforementioned critical response, to the audience ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, to the CinemaScore survey grades, to the box office.

On the plus side, crossing $300 million domestically is one of two milestones reached by The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in the last three days. The ticket sales from the United States and Canada are matching those from foreign territories, where the feature has made $320.6 million, and its worldwide box office total is now over $600 million ($628.8 million, to be precise). This puts the movie on the verge of becoming the biggest title in the world so far in 2026, as the only work sitting in front of it is Han Han's Pegasus 3, which has made $641 million, mostly in China.

The legacy for The Super Mario Galaxy Movie will be significant, and it will clearly go down as one of the biggest hits of 2026 no matter what else happens. But when I look at the results so far, I also can't help but wonder if the blockbuster may eventually fall short of hitting $1 billion.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie easily made it into the 10-figure club three years ago, finishing its global big screen run making $1.4 billion, but I'm not convinced just yet that the sequel is going to get its own membership. One significant part of my thinking here is the slower performance by the new film domestically, but another is the ratio between earnings at home and abroad: the feature is going to need ticket sales from the latter to supplement the slower start from the former, but that's not happening thus far. The $308.1 million made by The Super Mario Galaxy Movie in the United States and Canada represents 49 percent of the money made so far, while its predecessor saw that market offer just a 42.3 percent share.

When it was released in April 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie won the box office every weekend, and it's likely that the sequel will do the same considering the lack of significant competition on the way. How the numbers will compare side-by-side, however, will be a narrative to follow the entire time, and I plan to do that.

The Drama Quietly Just Had A Great Second Weekend And Looks To Snipe The Box Office Bronze Medal From You, Me & Tuscany

Released opposite The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, The Drama didn't exactly elicit high expectations when it arrived last week, but when looking at the film in this week's Top 10, I have to remark on it as a significant surprise. The new A24 movie featuring the star power of Zendaya and Robert Pattinson managed to have a stellar second weekend, as its ticket sales fell just 39 percent and early reporting suggests that it is going to hold position in third place despite the arrival of You, Me & Tuscany.

The secretive indie feature was made with a modest $28 million budget, according to Variety, and it has now eclipsed that pre-marketing/publicity number by making $30.8 million thus far domestically on the big screen. That means that it has now entered the box office Top 10 for A24 in the market, surpassing the $28.2 million made by Halina Reijn's Babygirl, and it will be fascinating to see where it finishes on that chart.

How will the domestic market change with the arrival of Lee Cronin's The Mummy, David Lowery's Mother Mary, Ben Wheatley's Normal and Cal McMau's Wasteman this coming Friday? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for my next column to see how it all shakes out.

Now that we are getting into the middle months of 2026, the record books are starting to shift in more meaningful ways. Anticipated movies are arriving in theaters with higher and higher expectations, and that means that the superlative "biggest opening weekend of the year" is only being held for a couple weeks at a time. Case in point: Phil Lord and Chris Miller's Project Hail Mary had an awesome debut in late March and easily topped the three-day premiere figure for Kevin Williamson's Scream 7, but today the news has arrived that the sci-fi feature's crown has been stolen by Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

This news is certainly not surprising, as the entire industry was aware that the new Nintendo blockbuster was going to become the big new #1 title in the immediate wake of its release... but there is a notable wrinkle in that it failed to outperform its predecessor, 2023's The Super Mario Bros. Movie. You can check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

The Super Mario Galaxy Movie Is Unable To Outdo The Super Mario Bros. Movie In Its Debut

Without trying to be too cynical about it, sequels are produced in Hollywood to capitalize on popularity. When a movie does well at the box office, studios green light follow-ups in hopes of giving audiences more of what they evidently want – and the hope in doing so is that the second film makes even more than the first (with the assumption that the audience has only grown in the wake of the original's release thanks to word of mouth and the home video market). That doesn't always work out, however, and that's what we're seeing with The Super Mario Galaxy Movie.

To be clear: the latest collaboration between Nintendo and Illumination Entertainment is performing very well. According to The Numbers, the new video game adaptation made $130.9 million between Friday and Sunday, and because the film had a mid-week release, that means that its total domestic gross is already up to $190.1 million. In only about a third of the time, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie has made over 87 percent of what Project Hail Mary has made in the United States and Canada thus far.

As noted, the film is the latest feature to earn the title "biggest debut of 2026," and it's not even particularly close: the Ryan Gosling led film previous earned the record with its $80.5 million start. In the current state of the industry, there is really nothing to complain about when it comes to making nine-figures in three days.

And yet, the numbers are a bit down compared to what The Super Mario Bros. Movie did a few years ago. On its way to earning $1.4 billion at the global box office during its full theatrical run, the animated feature made $146.4 million in its first Friday-to-Sunday, and because it too had a Wednesday release date, that meant it had $204.6 million banked domestically before its first Monday. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie couldn't match that performance.

What's interesting is that there are metrics beyond the numbers at the box office that match in saying movie-goers aren't digging the sequel as much as they liked the first. On Rotten Tomatoes, the Audience score (paired with a 41 percent positive reception from critics) sits at 89 percent, which is down from the 95 percent approval of the 2023 title. The results from CinemaScore surveys tell the exact same story: the new blockbuster got an "A-" grade compared to the "A" that its predecessor received.

It will be interesting to see if this is a trend that stretches into the coming weeks. There will be a lot of eyes on the second weekend performance of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie: in 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie saw its ticket sales dip just 37 percent weekend-to-weekend domestically; will the sequel be able to match it?

While questions linger about the details, I again emphasize that the film is doing extremely well on the big screen, and that narrative persists as one expands one's view to the global box office performance. The title has made $182.4 million in foreign markets to go with what it has made at home, bringing its worldwide total to an impressive $372.5 million in just a few days. The film wasn't inexpensive to make (Variety pins the budget at $110 million not counting publicity and marketing), but it's easily going to earn a big profit for all the studios involved.

The Drama Has To Settle For Third Place While Project Hail Mary Holds Strong

There was a zero percent chance that any feature other than The Super Mario Galaxy Movie was going to top the box office this weekend, but Kristoffer Borgli's The Drama arrived in wide release from A24 as counterprogramming for more adult crowds, and the results can be described as mixed. Unlike the video game blockbuster, the new movie starring Zendaya and Robert Pattinson has produced for just $28 million, and early results say it has earned back a little more than half that figure its debut.

The movie has been a source of some controversy because of the secrecy surrounding the plot, but that evidently got a good number of people curious. The film did have to settle for the bronze medal, however, as Project Hail Mary continues to hold strong in its third week. The critically acclaimed adaptation of Andy Weir's hit novel of the same name added another $30 million to its domestic earnings in the last three days, meaning that it has crossed $200 million ($217.2 million to be exact. Worldwide, the film has now gone over $400 million, as it has made $420.8 million to date.

How will the current Top 10 be shaken up next week with the arrival of Daniel Goldhaber's horror film Faces of Death and Kat Coiro's romantic comedy You, Me & Tuscany? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next week for a full analysis of everything that goes down, and check out our 2026 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the big titles heading to theaters and streaming in the coming months.

Looking at the box office results from last week, it was immediately clear that Phil Lord and Chris Miller's Project Hail Mary wouldn't be a "one and done" performer. Based on a popular, award-winning book by author Andy Weir and featuring some big name talent (Ryan Gosling obviously being the biggest name), the film successfully wowed critics, earned outstanding buzz, and set new records for 2026 during its debut weekend, and when that kind of magic is conjured, it doesn't lead to being labeled "front-loaded."

Lo and behold, the second weekend box office results are now in, and Project Hail Mary just had another excellent weekend… albeit partially because the new competition, principally Kirill Sokolov's horror action comedy They Will Kill You, didn't put up much of a fight. Check out the full Top 10 in the chart below and join me after for analysis.

Project Hail Mary Posts The Best Second Weekend Performance For A Number One Movie In 2026

A couple weeks ago, Daniel Chong's Hoppers pulled off an impressive box office feat: after earning $45.3 million in its opening weekend (the best debut for an original Pixar title since 2017), the film successfully kept putting butts in seats seven days later, seeing its ticket sales drop just 37 percent and adding $28.7 million to its domestic total.

That was awesome to see, but now, Project Hail Mary has bested that success.

The sci-fi blockbuster set a new high bar for 2026 domestically when it made $80.5 million in its first three days, and seven days later, that number has dropped just 32 percent (per The Numbers). The movie had an impressive $54.5 million in the last three days, further establishing the film as one of the first true hits of the year. To date, Project Hail Mary has made $164.3 million, making it easily the highest earner in the United States and Canada from the first three months of the year – it having now made more than other big titles like the aforementioned Hoppers ($138.6 million), Kevin Williamson's Scream 7 ($118.7 million) and Tyree Dillihay's GOAT ($100.9 million).

Project Hail Mary is also on pace to do far better at the box office than Ridley Scott's The Martian – the previous Andy Weir adaptation. The 2015 movie actually had a matching weekend-to-weekend drop in the aftermath of its debut, but the big difference is that the 2026 movie made more in its second Friday-to-Sunday than its predecessor made in its first. That's an exciting development when one considers that The Martian was a huge hit that finished its run domestically earning $228.4 million with a $108 million budget.

The second Weir adaptation was far more expensive to make (Puck reports a $200 million cost), but one also can't forget international distribution. Per THR, that awesome $164.3 million total domestically is matched by $136.2 million earned overseas, which brings Project Hail Mary past a killer milestone: it has now made over $300 million worldwide. The Martian finished its theatrical run around the globe earning $653.6 million, and it will be fascinating to see if the Ryan Gosling led-title can ultimately match and/or beat that figure.

Of course, there is one significant problem standing in the movie's way. While the new sci-fi title didn't have any true competition this weekend (more on that in a moment), that most definitely won't be the case as the calendar flips over to April and the world experiences the theatrical release of Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie – which is expected to be looked back upon as one of the biggest box office hits of 2026 after The Super Mario Bros. Movie made $1.4 billion globally back in 2023. The two titles are notably targeting two different core demographics; is there enough market for both to find success as we get into the new month? That will be one of the most fascinating box office storylines to track in the coming weeks.

They Will Kill You Has A Super Disappointing Opening Weekend, Debuts In Third Place With A Seven-Figure Take

Let's start with the silver lining, shall we? They Will Kill You was not an expensive movie to make. According to Deadline, the bloody romp starring Zazie Beetz, Myha'la, Tom Felton, Heather Graham, and Patricia Arquette only cost $20 million to make (not counting publicity and marketing costs). In retrospect, it's a good thing that the price was kept to a minimal, as it failed to inspire much excitement at the box office in its debut.

The film got what could be called a mixed-positive response from critics, with many noting impressive work from Beetz as the lead, but that talk did not turn into word-of-mouth that got people interested in purchasing a ticket. Making only $5 million in its first three days on the big screen, They Will Kill You had to settle for third place behind both Project Hail Mary and Hoppers (which is now in its fourth week of release and still going strong with a $12.2 million take).

It's the second rough performance for "fun horror" we've seen in the last week. Seven days ago, I noted that Searchlight Pictures made a significant mistake trying to have Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillet's Ready or Not 2: Here I Come face off against Project Hail Mary, as the former got its clock cleaned and made just $9.1 million in its first three days. Perhaps it would have been brighter for studios to save these titles for spooky season?

The future certainly doesn't look bright for They Will Kill You, but April should get off to a fascinating start with the arrival of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it will be exciting to see how Project Hail Mary ends up competing. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how the Top 10 shakes out, and check out our 2026 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the titles that are on the way to cinemas and streaming in the coming weeks and months.

Here are words I don't regularly get to say: original blockbusters are presently on a roll. In the last two weeks, Daniel Chong's Hoppers has been the number one movie at the domestic box office (the best performance for an original feature produced by Pixar since Lee Unkrich's Coco in 2017), and now we get to appreciate the big numbers put up by Phil Lord and Chris Miller's Project Hail Mary in its opening weekend, which has stolen the animated film's box office crown.

To be fair, we're talking about a work featuring the star power of Ryan Gosling, made by the filmmakers behind the acclaimed Spider-Verse movies, and adapted from a book by the author of The Martian, so this news isn't terribly surprising. At the same time, it's certainly a win worth celebrating... while also being sad that the other big new wide release of the weekend – Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come – was unfairly overshadowed. You can check out the full Top 10 in the chart below and join me after for analysis.

Project Hail Mary Has The Best Launch Of 2026

Up until today, the record for biggest opening weekend of 2026 belonged to Kevin Williamson's Scream 7, which overcame franchise-worst reviews and made $63.6 million domestically in its opening weekend. It was a result that generated some mixed feelings... but now, Project Hail Mary has stolen the record, and it's smiles abound.

The new sci-fi movie has been earning positive buzz for a while now, with critics glowing about Gosling's performance and the interstellar adventure that sees the star paired with a captivating alien named Rocky, and that hype has now turned into big ticket sales. In its first three days, per The Numbers, Project Hail Mary has made $80.6 million, which absolutely annihilated all competition playing in theaters this weekend.

The easiest comparison to make between the new film and a previous title is Ridley Scott's The Martian (as both are adaptations of novels by Andy Weir), and the 2026 movie is thus far on a stronger trajectory. When the Matt Damon-led blockbuster arrived in theaters in October 2015, it made $54.3 million in its debut. Ultimately, it went on to make $630.6 million globally, and I don't think anyone would be complaining if Project Hail Mary simply matched that total.

Of course, one important detail that needs mention is a comparison of budgets, as the new release, according to Puck, was put together with a $200 million production budget, which is quite a bit more than the $108 million cost of The Martian (via Box Office Mojo). The blockbuster is a major gamble for Amazon MGM Studios, but thus far, it appears as though it is paying off.

A strong performance in foreign markets is also going to be extremely important if Project Hail Mary is going to be ultimately deemed a box office success, and while the film isn't currently doing as well abroad as it is in the United States and Canada, it is still selling a lot of tickets. Thus far, it has made $60.4 million overseas, which brings the movie's three day worldwide box office total up to $141 million. That's immediately enough to make it the eighth most successful big screen release of 2026 thus far, having already earned more than titles including Sam Raimi's Send Help ($93.9 million) and Bart Layton's Crime 101 ($70.4 million).

It's a good thing to see this success happening early for Project Hail Mary, and it's going to need to see all of the positive word of mouth result in a strong second weekend. Why? Because when the calendar turns to April, the box office will see Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie arrive as the big new marquee blockbuster, and attentions will be violently shifted (a reminder: The Super Mario Movie made $146.4 million in its first Friday-to-Sunday in domestic release). The sci-fi film needs to make as much money as it can between now and April 3.

Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come Settles For Fourth Place With A Modest Debut

This box office report would be much more fun to write if I could solely focus on the success of Project Hail Mary... but the folks at Searchlight Pictures felt that it was a good idea to put Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come as direct competition, and that decision has yielded some really bad results. The new horror sequel got a warm reception from critics (albeit not as warm as the response to its predecessor), but the audience was far more interested in heading to space with Ryan Gosling.

The new release starring Samara Weaving and Kathryn Newton only managed to make $9.1 million this weekend, which was not only less than Project Hail Mary, but also less than Hoppers (now in its third week) and Aditya Dhar's Dhurandhar: The Revenge (which only played in 987 locations). As a silver lining, it is outpacing 2019's Ready Or Not, which made $8 million in its first three days, but obviously expectations were a lot higher for the sequel.

In retrospect, this definitely feels like the result of bad scheduling. If released in the fall during spooky season, Ready Or Not 2 could have gotten the attention it deserves, but it instead got completely ignored in favor of a title that was very obviously always going to win the weekend. This will be remembered as a "what if..." situation.

Looking ahead on the 2026 movie calendar, next week will principally see the current crop of releases competing with director Kirill Sokolov's horror action comedy They Will Kill You, which will arrive in theaters on Friday. How will the Top 10 shake out? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for our full breakdown of the numbers

Going into last weekend, there was a fair bit of mystery surrounding Daniel Chong's Hoppers. It had been a minute since Pixar last had a sizable box office win on an opening weekend with an original title (the streaming debuts of Pete Docter's Soul, Anrico Casarosa's Luca and Domee Shi's Turning Red not doing the brand any favors in the last few years), and it was unclear if audiences would turn up for the new, super silly beaver movie. By Sunday, however, the film put up numbers that registered as the best start for a non-sequel from the animation studio since Lee Unkrich's Coco in 2017... and the good times are continuing to roll in its sophomore weekend.

In an age when a great number of notable releases end up having box office numbers that are super front-loaded (looking at you, Kevin Williamson's Scream 7), Hoppers is quickly turning into a big hit with potentially long legs – though what is good news for the new animated feature isn't particularly awesome news for Vanessa Caswill's Reminders Of Him (the new Colleen Hoover adaptation). Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Hoppers Has A Minimal Weekend-To-Weekend Drop Following Its Stellar Debut

Writing this column every weekend, I like to keep an eye out for growing trends, and one that might be worth keeping track of in the coming year may be soft drops for popular animated features in their second week (a trend that pairs with the current popularity of animation movies in general on the big screen). Last month, Tyree Dillihay's GOAT made headlines when it demonstrated much more durability compared to Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights, as it went from having a $27.2 million domestic debut in second place to winning the box office in its second weekend with a $16.9 million haul – a tiny 38 percent drop.

This week, Hoppers pulled off the same trick, but it's an even better version. The Pixar film did much better than GOAT in its first Friday-to-Sunday, making $45.3 million in the United States and Canada, and it's now followed up that performance by adding $28.5 million to its coffers – just a 37 percent difference. It suggests that this is a movie that has people talking: the positive critical reaction got people interested, and now folks are going for a second viewing and/or telling their friends/family that they should make the trip to their local theater.

Thus far, the new 2026 movie has made $86.8 million domestically, which means that it already ranks as the third most successful new film of the year behind the aforementioned Scream 7 (which has now made $106.5 million domestically) and GOAT ($90.6 million). At the rate things are going, it should easily top both of those titles before we say goodbye to March.

Of course, being part of the incredibly successful Pixar legacy, the film has a while to go before it is considered one of the biggest titles the animation studios has put out – but it has already started climbing the ladder domestically. It has ascended out of the basement, as it has made more money than Dan Scanlon's Onward (which saw its time in theaters cut short by the COVID-19 pandemic), and it has already surpassed the earnings of Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi and Adrian Molina's Elio, which completed its unsuccessful big screen run making $73 million last summer.

Hoppers success at home continues to be matched by its performance in foreign markets as well. To date, according to Box Office Mojo, the new release has made $164.7 million worldwide. In that arena, the film has actually already eclipsed the ticket sales of GOAT (which has brought in $162.8 million globally). As far as Hollywood titles are concerned, it sits behind both Wuthering Heights ($226.4 million) and Scream 7 ($176.9 million) in the rankings for the year.

Reminders Of Him Follows Regretting You As The Second Colleen Hoover Adaptation Failing To Debut At #1

What's good news for Hoppers is not so great news for the latest Colleen Hoover adaptation. While one doesn't imagine that there is a crazy amount of crossover between the core demographics of the two releases, it certainly can be said that the former stopped the latter from getting better headlines and winning a box office crown.

Reminders Of Him had to settle for second place in its first weekend, with the film making $18.3 million domestically. Taking into account that the movie isn't a massive blockbuster and didn't have an outrageous production budget ($25 million, per Deadline), it's definitely not shaping up to be a big flop, but it's also not the success that was hoped for given the cache of the Colleen Hoover brand.

Remember: we are less than a couple years removed from the release of Justin Baldoni's It Ends With Us starring Blake Lively, which made $351.4 million worldwide before becoming the subject of headlines regarding behind the scenes drama. The industry was hopeful that the film would be the first of a string of hits featuring Hoover's name, but Josh Boone's Regretting You did nowhere near matching business when it arrived last fall (making $13.7 million domestically in its debut before ultimately grossing $90.5 million worldwide) and Reminders Of Him appears to be on a similar trajectory.

At present, there is an interesting blend of titles mixing it up on marquees around the world, and we should be seeing a big splash in a few days that mix things up even more, as Friday will see the arrival of Phil Lord and Chris Miller's Project Hail Mary starring Ryan Gosling and Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's Ready Or Not 2: Here I Come with Samara Weaving. The Top 10 should get a big shakeup, so be sure to return here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how everything plays out.

While once seen as a major champion for fresh storytelling, Pixar's run with original movies in the last few years hasn't quite matched its legacy. The animation studio has produced hit sequels, including Pete Docter's Inside Out 2 and Josh Cooley's Toy Story 4, but Dan Scanlon's Onward, Enrico Casarosa's Luca, Domee Shi's Turning Red, and Docter's Soul all saw their releases hamstrung by the COVID-19 pandemic; Peter Sohn's Elemental needed an extended period to grow its box office numbers; and Madeline Sharafian, Domee Shi, and Adrian Molina's Elio straight-up underperformed. Because of this recent history, there were a lot of question marks surrounding the release of Daniel Chong's Hoppers – but the audience has responded with exclamation marks.

The new animal-centric animated feature dominated the box office this past weekend with a strong debut – though what's good for Hoppers turned out to be not so great for Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride! and Kevin Williamson's Scream 7. You can scope out the full domestic Top 10 for the weekend below, and join me after for analysis.

Hoppers Arrives As Pixar's Best Original Movie At The Box Office Since 2017

In 2024, Pixar had one of the biggest box office successes of the year with the release of Inside Out 2, and the animation studio has now stuck gold in the early months of 2026 with Hoppers.

According to Box Office Mojo, the new movie made $46 million in its debut domestically, and while that's not exactly "all-time" money when discussing Pixar on the big screen, it's definitely a big win as an original title. In fact, one needs to go back all the way to 2017 and the arrival of Lee Unkrich's Coco to find the last non-franchise title from the studio that made that much money in its first three days of domestic release.

The success comes after the film managed to get some extremely positive buzz in the days before release (critics really liked to use the word "best" in writing about Hoppers), and the picture gets even rosier when one factors in the performance abroad. The movie made $42 million overseas to go along with the ticket sales in the United States and Canada, which brings its total gross to date up to $88 million.

This success comes at a time when things are going well for animation on the big screen: Byron Howard and Jared Bush's Zootopia 2 successfully managed to claim the title of biggest film of 2025 domestically last month, and Tyree Dillihay's GOAT has made $146.3 million so far worldwide after arriving in theaters in the middle of February. Audiences of all ages are clearly digging the material that animation studios are putting out these days, and the positive word of mouth should only help Hoppers in the weeks to come.

To go along with all of the raves from professional movie writers, the new Pixar movie has gotten an extremely warm welcome from audiences as well, as illustrated by the "A" grade returned from CinemaScore surveys. Looking at the 2026 movie release schedule, the film also doesn't seem to have any titles targeting its core demographic until Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie arrives in early April, so I expect there's a good chance it stays in at least the Top 3 through the end of the month.

The Bride! Stumbles Out Of The Gate With A Tough Third Place Finish In Its Opening Weekend

Unfortunately, while things are going very well for Hoppers at the box office, things did not go as swimmingly for The Bride! In the words of Christian Bale, Maggie Gyllenhaal was given the freedom to take a big swing with her take on the Bride of Frankenstein story, but audiences, it seems, weren't quite ready for her vision. The movie got word-of-mouth full of extremes going into its wide release (a mix of five star and zero star reactions), and it only managed to take third place in its debut.

Featuring current Oscar-nominee Jessie Buckley in the titular role, The Bride! managed to only bring in $7.3 million over the last three days, and it made slightly less than that abroad – leading to a global total of just $13.6 million in its opening weekend. Considering this is a title with a reported budget in the range of $90 million, according to Variety, it's definitely not the start that anyone was hoping for.

Based on reactions so far, it doesn't look like the movie is going to be growing legs in the weeks ahead either, which means it appears as though we will end up looking at the audacious horror/crime feature as an early 2026 bomb.

Scream 7 Suffers A Massive Fall After Its Record Breaking Start

In last week’s box office column, I noted that I would be keeping an eye on the legs shown by Scream 7. The film had a massive opening (one that registered as the biggest in the history of the franchise), but I wondered if the movie potentially had some troubled waters ahead due to both critical and audience reception: the sequel earned the worst reviews of any title in the series and the lowest CinemaScore grade (tied with Wes Craven’s Scream 4). I wondered if the lacking positive word of mouth would end up hurting its ticket sales in its second week… and it turns out I was right to prep for a massive drop.

While Scream 2 was able to still land in second place and make $17.1 million, that figure is a shocking 72 percent fall weekend-to-weekend (to provide context for those who don’t regularly track box office, “bad” is usually a figure in the high 50s, so this is particularly rough). To date, the movie has now made $93.4 million domestically, which is enough for fourth place in the history of the franchise in the market (Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett’s Scream VI holds the top spot having made $108.4 million).

So what happened here? It’s not particularly difficult to decipher. The people who decided that they were going to see Scream 7 no matter what flocked to their local theaters last week when the movie first arrived in theaters – and because this is a major horror franchise, that was a considerable crowd. Unfortunately, those folks were evidently not too impressed with what they witnessed, and didn’t make a point of telling their friends and family that they should check it out. Simultaneously, those who were on the fence about purchasing a ticket ultimately decided against it. The end result is a serious and immediate decrease in ticket sales, and crowds are only going to get thinner and thinner as we get deeper into March 2026.

Despite this major drop, one expects that Scream 7’s performance overall should mean that this will not be the end of the long-running meta horror franchise. Globally, the film has made $149.5 million, which is plenty when one compares it to the production’s $45 million budget (per Deadline).

Looking ahead on the movie release schedule, next week will feature some new competition for the current Top 10 with fresh titles including Vanessa Caswill's Reminders Of Him (a new Colleen Hoover adaptation), Ian Tuason's sound-driven horror feature undertone, and Amy Wang's Mean Girls-meets-The Substance body horror comedy Slanted. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to see how things shake out for the weekend.

Last weekend's box office results were far from impressive. While the industry saw a nice spike around Valentine's Day earlier in the month, with Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights leading the market, my report last Sunday was all about how the industry offered few intriguing new options in wide release – allowing Tyree Dillihay's GOAT to rise to the number one spot in the Top 10. In my feature recapping the numbers, I noted that it appeared as though Hollywood was basically paving a path for Kevin Williamson's Scream 7 to dominate at the end of the month, and seven days later, that's exactly what has happened.

The slasher sequel was the only new wide release to arrive in theaters this past Friday, and it used all of its breathing room to put up the biggest opening weekend of the 2026 movie calendar so far. It's huge news for the blockbuster, but it comes with a bit of an asterisk, as while the success is massive by franchise standards, the overall reception hasn't exactly been something for the filmmakers and stars to brag about. You can check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Scream 7 Steamrolls The Competition At The Box Office With Big Results Worldwide

You know an opening weekend is successful when it proves to basically double the previous record holder for the year, and that's precisely what Scream 7 has accomplished – per early reporting from The Numbers. Current results put the Neve Campbell-led movie at $64.1 million earned domestically since it arrived on the big screen on Friday, and that's quite a lot more than the 2026 record-setting $32.8 million made by Wuthering Heights when it debuted a couple weeks ago.

Not just impressive by the standards of the young year, Scream 7 is also doing well to outperform ever single one of its predecessors, and it's the second title in a row from the series to accomplish that particular feat. In 2023, Matt Bettinelli-Olpin and Tyler Gillett's Scream VI set a new opening weekend record for the franchise, earning $44.4 million and topping the $34.7 million made by Wes Craven's Scream 3 in 2000. Now Kevin Williamson's new release sits on top of the charts in that respect.

The success goes beyond the ticket sales in the United States and Canada too. In addition to the $64.1 million earned at home, foreign markets have contributed $33.1 million to the theatrical release's success, bringing its worldwide total after three days up to $97.2 million. It has already outgrossed the aforementioned Scream 3, which completed its global run on the big screen making $96 million. Wes Craven's original Scream, now just about nine months away from its 30th anniversary, still remains the highest grossing title in the franchise, having made $173 million in 1996/1997 (and that's without accounting for inflation). It should go without saying that there will be a lot of interest in seeing if Scream 7 can be the title to dethrone it.

The big thing standing in the film's way? One word: reception.

Scream 7 may now hold an IP record for the biggest opening weekend, but it seems that accomplishment comes in spite of word of mouth instead of as a result of it. The reaction from critics (arriving very late last week) came in sharp contrast to the response earned by its two predecessors in the franchise's current era, which earned praise for keeping the spirit of the Wes Craven series alive following the filmmaker's passing back in 2015. The reactions to the Kevin Williamson-directed entry have been far less friendly (I personally delivered a one-and-a-half star Scream 7 review for CinemaBlend).

It's not just critics either, as audience ratings are also down for the new release. Audience scores on Rotten Tomatoes are lower for the 2026 slasher film than the response to either 2022's Scream or Scream VI, and that pattern continues when one looks at the results from CinemaScore surveys: the new movie got a "B-" grade which ties Scream 4 for the weakest in the series (1997's Scream 2, 2022's Scream and 2023's Scream VI hold a three-way tie for the best grade with their "B+" results). This doesn't suggest that people are coming out of their local theater suggesting that all of their friends partake in the same cinematic experience.

What does this mean? While nothing is ever guaranteed, these metrics suggest that Scream 7 may have a tough go of it in March and have difficulty retaining its audience in the weeks ahead. Franchise curiosity, the mystery surrounding the identity/identities of the new Ghostface/s, and the return of Neve Campbell as Sidney Prescott may have inflated ticket sales for the debut, but now that people have seen it and not loved what they've seen I imagine we're going to see a significant drop-off come next Sunday.

The second weekend numbers will be one thing I keep an eye on next week, especially because the film should be getting some significant competition in wide release with the debut of Daniel Chong's Hoppers – the latest feature from Pixar and the latest title to try and continue the successful trend of animation on the big screen (following in the wake of GOAT and Byron Howard and Jared Bush's Zootopia 2, which was recently crowned the 2025 domestic box office champion). There will be plenty to discuss in seven days when the new Top 10 is published, so be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend for my full break down of the results.

This week's Friday-to-Sunday stretch was a bit of a wheel-spinner for Hollywood at the box office. Last weekend had the flair of a double holiday – with Valentine's Day and President's Day lined up together – and we are now just a few days removed from the anticipated release of Kevin Williamson's Scream 7, which is expected to be the title that closes out February on top. But stuck in the square middle of that, the last few days in theaters have been slow, resulting in last week's biggest titles remaining in the first two slots of the domestic top 10.

There is one big difference between this weekend and last, however: while Valentine's Day saw Emerald Fennel's Wuthering Heights win the box office crown, it has now slipped into second place thanks to Tyree Dillihay's GOAT seeing its ticket sales experience a relatively small drop compared to how it performed in its debut. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

GOAT Rises To The Top Of The Box Office Thanks To A Soft Weekend-To-Weekend Drop

As I noted last Sunday following the impressive arrival of GOAT in theaters, animated movies have been huge contributors to the current box office landscape. Just look at Byron Howard and Jared Bush's Zootopia 2, which was the big hit of last Thanksgiving and can still be seen in the chat above occupying ninth place and adding another $2.3 million to its awesome domestic haul (and it looks like it is going to outlast James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash in the Top 10). As much content as there is on television and the internet, audiences of all ages – but especially families – are clearly still appreciating the fun of the big screen experience, and that's again apparent in the strong legs that the new Steph Curry-produced feature.

When the final results came in last week, GOAT earned $27.2 million in its domestic debut, and according to The Numbers, ticket sales have dipped only 38 percent weekend-to-weekend. In the last three days, the Sony Pictures Animation release added $17 million to its total in the region, bringing its earnings to date up to $58.3 million. That now makes it the second highest grossing title of 2026 so far, as it has now officially outpaced Sam Raimi's Send Help – which has made $55.5 million to date and remains in the Top 5 following its late January premiere.

Is it a smash hit? No – but the way things are going these days in the industry, a movie is much better off simmering in the Top 10 versus making a big splash in its debut and then fading fast as the majority of people opt to either skip it or wait until its available for home viewing.

GOAT wasn't an inexpensive movie to produce, as Deadline reports that the pre-marketing and publicity budget being in the $80-90 million range. Fortunately, the film has solid if not exceptional ticket sales overseas giving it a boost. While the animated title is performing better at home than in foreign markets, it's nonetheless attracting attention: to date, it has brought in $44 million from outside the United States and Canada, which brings its global total to date up to $102 million.

The road ahead for may be a bit difficult, as the latest from Pixar, Daniel Chong's Hoppers, is arriving early next month and going to be targeting the exact same core demographic, and when we look back on 2026 for animated features, GOAT's box office may get overlooked compared to other massive titles like Aaron Horvath and Michael Jelenic's The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and Andrew Stanton's Toy Story 5. That being said, the film has nonetheless done a nice job making a bit of a splash here in mid-February.

Losing The Valentine's Day Bump Sees Wuthering Heights Settle For Silver

Unfortunately, while GOAT saw strong weekend-to-weekend numbers unfold across the last three days, the same can't really be said for Wuthering Heights. While there is no question that launching the Margot Robbie-Jacob Elordi film on the big screen in time for Valentine's Day was a great call, the movie is now experiencing the downside of such an approach: now that the holiday is over, interest in the Emily Brontë adaptation seems to be over as well.

It's far from a disastrous slip in the 60-70 percent range, but Wuthering Heights saw its ticket sales slip 57 percent compared to its opening weekend. The film made $14.2 million since Friday, which brings its domestic total to date up to $60 million (which is enough for it to hold claim its title as the biggest film of 2026 so far, but GOAT is nipping at its heels).

Overseas, the gothic story is doing much better than it is at home: so far, foreign markets have seen the film earn $91.7 million, which brings its worldwide gross to date up to $151.7 million.

I Can Only Imagine 2 And How To Make A Killing Fail To Make Much Of An Impression As The Weekend's Biggest New Releases

As for why GOAT and Wuthering Heights remained battling for the top spots, the simple explanation is that none of the new releases from this past Friday failed to make much of an impression.

Andrew Erwin and Brent McCorkle's I Can Only Imagine 2 tried to recreate the success of its 2018 predecessor (which made $17 million when it debuted in theaters and went on to make $85.8 million worldwide), but the film only managed to make $8 million and had to settle for third place. It's a particularly rough performance given that the movie played in over 3,100 locations

John Patton Ford's How To Make A Killing, meanwhile, had a much smaller release, but it failed to crack the Top 5. The new A24 movie features a stellar cast including Glen Powell, Jessica Henwick, Ed Harris, Zach Woods, Topher Grace and Margaret Qualley, but it divided critics to a rather extreme degree and it only earned $3.6 million.

As noted earlier, things should be shaken up in a big way come next Sunday, as not only will Scream 7 be in theaters, but Neon will also be expanding the release of Baz Luhrmann's EPiC: Elvis Presley In Concert (which made $3.6 million in the last three days playing in 325 locations). Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend to see how the Top 10 comes together, and check out our 2026 Movie Release Calendar to learn about all of the titles on the way in the coming weeks and months.

Valentine's Day weekend in 2025 was different than most years. While the love-centric holiday typically sees studios drop some romance in theaters for audiences, Marvel Studios opted to use the three-day stretch to debut Julius Onah's Captain America: Brave New World into wide release. In 2026, things returned to a bit of "normalcy" with the the arrival of Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights – and while the ticket sales aren't nearly as robust as they were 12 months ago, the new Margot Robbie/Jacob Elordi film still managed to dominate the domestic market.

Even beyond the new #1 movie, however, there were some notable developments in the last three days, as the entire Top 3 is brand new, and Sam Raimi's Send Help successfully pulled off a minimal one percent weekend-to-weekend drop during its third Friday-to-Sunday in release. You can check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Wuthering Heights Easily Takes #1 Despite Mixed Buzz

Wuthering Heights arrived in theaters in a strange place this weekend. The movie – advertised as a lusty, sweaty big screen experience – registered as an ideal fit for the holiday (some may remember that Sam Taylor-Johnson's Fifty Shades Of Grey pulled a nearly identical marketing move back in 2015), and there was a lot of confidence in the star power of its two leads in combination with the track record of the writer/director. The big wrench in the gears going into Friday was that the film got a rather lukewarm reception from critics (CinemaBlend's Sarah El-Mahmoud gave it three stars in her review), and it created questions about how the buzz would impact box office.

Now the early results are in, and per The Numbers, and like the early response, they register as a mixed bag. The movie earned $34.8 million in the last three days, which was more than enough to win the domestic box office crown, but it's also notably lower than the $40 million that prognosticators across the industry expected from the three-day gross (I'll also add that it pales in comparison to the aforementioned Fifty Shades of Grey, which was ripped by critics but still made $85.2 million in its premiere).

As far as Emerald Fennell-directed movies go, the film is already far bigger than both 2023's Saltburn and 2020's Promising Young Woman, which respectively made $21 million and $18.9 million worldwide, and it's performing well by the standards of Margot Robbie's filmography as well. She hasn't always found box office success with projects beyond big franchise titles – with Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon A Time In Hollywood being the big exception – and Wuthering Heights is already doing much better than Damien Chazelle's Babylon, David O. Russell's Amsterdam and Kogonada's A Big Bold Beautiful Journey.

It's actually the biggest domestic debut of 2026 so far, though that is not a title that it is likely going to hold on to for very long.

Looking beyond the domestic market, Wuthering Height's performance abroad is helping to supplement the smaller-than-expected numbers at home. Foreign ticket sales hit $42 million, which means that the film has grossed $76.8 million so far – which puts the results on the higher end of the $70-80 million range that Deadline predicted going into the weekend.

But will the film be able to create momentum in the coming weeks? That's an open question, and not just because it won't have the Valentine's Day bump as it plays through late February. One bit of trouble to pay attention to is the result from CinemaScore surveys, which saw Wuthering Heights earn a pedestrian "B" grade. Between that response and the lack of enthusiasm from professional critics, we may be seeing a formula develop for a sizable drop-off in second week ticket sales.

GOAT Maintains The Strong Trend For Animation, While Crime 101 Settles For Third Place With An Unimpressive Debut Despite Its Star Power

It wasn't just Wuthering Heights that saw some solid numbers this weekend; when accounting for all of the titles currently playing on the big screen across the country, the last three days saw the highest earnings for cinemas since the very first weekend of the year (when James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash was right in the middle of its box office dominance).

One of the biggest contributors to this total was Tyree Dillihay's GOAT – which was never expected to top Wuthering Heights on the domestic chart but still didn't quite well anyway. Family movies continue to do better than most on the big screen (note that Jared Bush and Byron Howard's Zootopia 2 is still ranked sixth on the chart up top), and the new basketball-themed release from Sony Pictures Animation further solidifies the trend. In addition to making $26 million domestically in the last few days, it has also made $15 million from markets outside of the United States and Canada, bringing its global total so far up to $41.6 million.

Much less impressive is the performance by Bart Layton's Crime 101 – though I suppose an eight figure opening weekend result for an adult drama isn't something to totally dismiss in today's world. It would be a lot better if its production didn't carry a $90 million price tag (per Variety). The crime film, with an impressive cast including Chris Hemsworth, Halle Berry, Barry Keoghan, Nick Nolte, and Mark Ruffalo, made $12 million abroad to go with the $15.1 million earned domestically, and it got strong marks from critics.

Despite Enhanced Competition, Send Help Holds Firm With Another Strong Weekend

To close out this weekend's box office report, I also want to shine a quick spotlight on Send Help – which hasn't been putting up blockbuster numbers, but has appropriately been a tough survivor in cinemas since arriving at the end of last month. In last Sunday's column, I pointed to the movie having a healthy 53 percent weekend-to-weekend drop following its debut (going from $19.1 million to $9 million earned), and it made almost the exact same amount the last three days despite hefty competition from new releases. Thus far, the film has made $72.1 million worldwide, and it continues to demonstrate a hunger from audience for more original horror.

How will all of these titles fare next week when the collection of fresh arrivals includes John Patton Ford's How To Make A Killing, Andrew Erwin and Brent McCorkle's I Can Only Imagine 2, Gavin Polone's Psycho Killer, and Polly Findlay's Midwinter Break? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to scope out the results.

The relationship between the box office and the Super Bowl is not a friendly one. While it's true that the latter takes place on what is generally the slowest day of any given weekend, it's such a standout event that it successfully overshadows all entertainment – and that includes going out to the local theater to catch a movie. Hollywood has adjusted to this by not really bothering to compete, as this is not generally a Friday-to-Sunday stretch that sees the release of major new blockbusters... and that has allowed Sam Raimi's Send Help to once again sit at the top of the domestic Top 10.

It's not exactly a case of domination, as no film did particularly well on the big screen in the last three days, but the movie did still manage to keep its box office crown with a rather impressive and soft weekend-to-weekend drop. You can scope out the full chart below and join me after for analysis.

Send Help Stays On Top Of The Box Office With A Soft Drop After Its Debut

If you've been following box office developments in the last year, you know that the horror genre has heat, and things tend to go particularly well ticket sales-wise when positive word of mouth gets going. Send Help is turning into the latest perfect example of this. While the new 2026 movie isn't exactly putting up numbers comparable to Ryan Coogler's Sinners or Zach Cregger's Weapons, it has now successfully followed up a impressive debut with a solid second weekend.

According to The Numbers, the Sam Raimi film turned what was expected to be a much closer battle for #1 into an easy win, and the numbers are strong. The film didn't exactly become an instant blockbuster when it arrived on the big screen last week, as it made $19.1 million in its first three days, but the movie got a very positive response from critics and got audiences buzzing, and the end result of that is a 48 percent weekend-to-weekend drop.

The new horror movie added $10 million to its coffers domestically over the last three days per early reporting, and that brings its total gross in the market up to $35.8 million. For a feature with a modest reported budget of $40 million (via Variety), that's a pretty good place to be at this point – especially when you compare the results to the buzzy horror title that was released this time last year: Drew Hancock's Companion. Both features earned great reviews prior to arriving on the big screen, but Send Help has had a totally different trajectory, as the 2025 release made only half of what the new film made in its opening weekend and then saw its ticket sales tumble 68 percent despite strong word of mouth.

To go along with its success in the United States and Canada, the Rachel McAdams/Dylan O'Brien two-hander has also made $17.9 million in foreign markets, which brings its worldwide box office total to date up to $53.7 million. I can't fully call it a ringing success because there is still a road to travel before all of the numbers look really great on paper, but the title is in a good place for now.

As noted last week, it can be said to be a nice step up from the last time that Sam Raimi delivered an original horror movie: the underrated 2009 feature Drag Me To Hell. The Alison Lohman-led feature was sitting at $28.2 million by the tenth day of its domestic release – and that was in mid-summer.

Maintaining momentum might be a bit difficult in the immediate future thanks to the collection of titles arriving in wide release for the upcoming Valentine's Day weekend (more on that later), and that will be something to keep an eye on come this time next week.

Iron Lung Falls To Third Place After A Weak Second Weekend, But It's Already Set To Have A Great Legacy

In last week's box office column, I admitted to having no idea what the future would hold for Iron Lung – the new feature from filmmaker Mark Fischback, best known to his YouTube followers as Markiplier. Despite not having major studio backing and non-traditional marketing, movie came out of nowhere to compete with Send Help for the top spot at the box office, and in the wake of that success, I acknowledged that I had no idea if it was heat that the title could maintain.

It turns out that it couldn't.

While Iron Lung turned a lot of heads with its arrival in wide release, it would appear that didn't translate to a curiosity powerful enough to drive a strong second weekend. While Send Help saw its ticket sales drop by less than half after its debut, the indie horror movie saw its domestic earnings sink 67 percent, and it only made $6 million in the last three days – which was a descent matched by Brett Ratner's controversial documentary Melania, which went from third place to tenth place and made only $2.4 million in the last three days.

But here's the significant difference between those two features: Amazon paid a ridiculous $40 million to license Melania, which is about to drop out of the Top 10 after having made only $13.4 million; Iron Lung cost only $3 million to produce, per Deadline, and it's still hanging around in the Top 5 after shocking the world with its $30.8 million gross so far. One is a massive bomb, while the other will ultimately be remembered as one of the best big screen success stories of 2026.

The Strangers: Chapter 3 Closes Out The Horror Trilogy With A Whimper

Looping back to the discussion of the Super Bowl, studios knew not to drop any highly anticipated titles in theaters this past Friday in acknowledgement that nothing could complete with the NFL championship game. As a result, the middle of this weekend's Top 10 is filled with smaller titles that managed to bring in seven-figures including Chuck Kinnane and Dan Kinnane's romantic drama Solo Mio starring Kevin James, Paul Dugdale and Farah Khalid's concert movie Stray Kids: The DominATE Experience, and Luc Besson's Dracula. These films didn't manage to put up what could be called headline-worthy ticket sales – but I will shine a quick spotlight on Renny Harlin's The Strangers: Chapter 3, which closes out the horror trilogy starring Madelaine Petsch with the weakest debut of the series.

None of the new Strangers movies performed well, but they've also had diminishing returns. The first made just $11.8 million when it debuted in May 2024, The Strangers: Chapter 2 brought in just $5.8 million in its first three days last fall, and now The Strangers: Chapter 3 has brough the canon to an end with a whimper, having made just $3.5 million since Friday. These results will probably make it hard to justify a theatrical release for the near-four hour supercut that Petsch recently told me about in an interview.

As alluded to earlier, next week should see a good bump in box office activity, as multiple new titles are arriving on the big screen so that couples can celebrate Valentine's Day in the comfort of a movie theater: Emerald Fennell's Wuthering Heights, Gore Verbinski's Good Luck, Have Fun, Don't Die, Bart Layton's Crime 101, and Tyree Dillihay and Adam Rosette's GOAT. Which film will end up on top? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to scope out the results.

Without totally demeaning its draw, Timur Bekmambetov's Mercy became the first 2026 title to top the box office last weekend... but it kind of just won by default. The $10.8 million it made wasn't exactly impressive, it's ascendency to the #1 spot domestically was mostly because of fading ticket sales for James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash. Today, however, I can report on a true race for a new film to be declared "the number one movie in America," as Sam Raimi's Send Help has edged out surprise competition from Mark Fischbach's video game adaptation Iron Lung.

It's another notable win for the horror genre, which stacked up a number of them in 2025 and has fans hoping for matching success in the new year. You can check out the full domestic Top 10 in the chart below and join me after for analysis.

Send Help Is The First 2026 Movie To Crack $20 Million In Its Domestic Opening Weekend

It took five weekends to get us to this point, but we finally have a new release in 2026 making over $20 million domestically.

Per early box office results reported by The Numbers, has hit that mark, and while it's not exactly a blockbuster start, it's solid. The film arrived in theaters after building a nice wave of buzz, with critics applauding its darkly comic and gross sensibilities along with the performances by stars Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien (sentiments I also shared in my four star review for CinemaBlend), and that hype successfully piqued the curiosity of movie-goers.

Making the results from Send Help's opening weekend only sweeter is the acknowledgement that this was not an expensive film to make (the survival thriller has some big sequences and a fair amount of both special and visual effects, but it's mostly a small scale story centering on the dynamic between its two lead characters). Per Variety, the project was made with a $40 million budget, which means that it's well on its way to the proverbial black.

Expanding the focus to look at the movie's performance around the world, thus far it's not exactly doubling its domestic haul, but it has reportedly brought in $8.1 million so far from foreign markets, bringing its worldwide total so far up to $28.1 million.

The results look even better when you start making comparisons. For example, this time last year saw another original horror movie arrive during this exact box office weekend – namely Drew Hancock's Companion starring Sophie Thatcher and Jack Quaid – and while it too earned raves from most who saw it early, it only managed to make $9.3 million in its first three days of domestic release.

Send Help is also performing much better than the last time Sam Raimi directed a fresh genre feature: 2009's Drag Me To Hell. That film saw Raimi coming off the incredibly successful Spider-Man trilogy and had a prime summer release date, but it had to settle for fourth place in its opening weekend after making $15.8 million.

Will the movie be able to grow legs? That's a hard question to answer. Competition isn't too powerful next weekend thanks to the world's focus on the Super Bowl, and Valentine's Day has a trio of notable titles set to arrive in theaters. As always with new number one titles, I'll be keeping an eye on its weekend-to-weekend numbers as we get deeper into February.

Iron Lung Offers A Surprising Challenge For The #1 Spot

This time last week, I predicted that Send Help would become the new film at the top of the box office, and I became more and more confident that result was coming as Brett Ratner's Melania documentary was getting by critics and early tracking numbers came in... but what I most definitely didn't expect was that Iron Lung would be a serious challenger for this week's crown. The film is the feature debut for writer, director, and star Mark Fischbach, best known for his content creation on YouTube, and it's based on the submarine simulation game of the same name from 2022.

The movie is the debut launch for Markiplier Studios (named for Fischbach's online pseudonym), and while the movie was made for less than $3 million, per Deadline, it managed to gross a reported $18 million in its debut, showing in over 3,000 screens nationwide.

It's the biggest success we've seen in recent years outside of Damien Leone's Terrifier franchise, and the numbers are pretty similar: when it arrived in theaters in October 2024, Terrifier 3 managed to top the box office making $18.9 million. And thanks to the on-going Halloween season, audiences kept coming back, and it ultimately made $54 million domestically and $76.3 million worldwide.

Will Iron Lung be able to match that? To be perfectly honest, I have no idea, as I am still rather blindsided by its opening weekend success. My instinct is to predict that Send Help will have the stronger staying power thanks to its big names and the major studio behind it, but I can't tell if what we're seeing from the new video game adaptation is a flash in the pan success or the start of a phenomenon. We'll have a better idea of what's up this time next week.

Taking a look ahead at what's set to arrive on the big screen on Friday, it's certainly an eclectic mix of titles... and ones that may have a hard time being a distraction from the NFL championship game. The collection of titles includes Luc Besson's Dracula, Renny Harlin's trilogy-capper The Strangers: Chapter 3, and the wide expansion of Aidan Zamiri's Charli XCX faux documentary The Moment. Head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to find out if any of them have what it takes to unseat Send Help, and for a full look at what's coming to the big screen this year, check out our 2026 Movie Release Calendar.

Well, it had to happen eventually. When James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash arrived in theaters in mid-December, it did exactly what it was expected to do (which is to say act like a bulldozer at the box office), but we have spent most of January waiting for the arrival of a title that would knock it out of its #1 position. Last Sunday, Nia DaCosta's 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple was unable to be that movie, as final results broke a virtual tie in the early numbers, but after after six straight weekends, we now have a new film sitting at the top of the domestic market: Timur Bekmambetov's Mercy.

Featuring the star power of Chris Pratt and Rebecca Ferguson, the new real-time science-fiction feature didn't exactly have what anyone would describe as a great opening weekend, but the film did sell enough tickets to become the new number one movie in the United States and Canada. You can check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Mercy Defies Bad Buzz And Wins The Box Office On A Slow Weekend

To be perfectly blunt, Mercy entered its opening weekend with some wretched buzz. I personally am not a fan, as evidenced by my one-and-a-half star CinemaBlend review, but that was also not a rare sentiment among my film critic colleagues – many of whom joined me in pointing out its gaping storytelling problems. That being said, there is a seemingly endless number of movies that arrived in theaters on a wave of bad buzz and still claimed the number one spot at the box office, and this title is the latest.

Mercy didn't exactly light the world on fire, as early weekend results from The Numbers show that it had what is being recorded as only the third best debut for a new 2026 movie: it made less than both the aforementioned 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple ($12.5 million) and Johannes Roberts' Primate ($11.2 million). But because the big screen audience for Avatar: Fire And Ash continues to shrink and its blockbuster numbers continue to wane, the $11.1 million earned was enough for it to land at #1. It's win is more about timing than true success.

Thus far, the Chris Pratt/Rebecca Ferguson movie has just about matched its domestic haul so far in overseas markets, as it has made $11.6 million abroad – which brings its worldwide total to date up to $22.8 million. Considering that the film is almost guaranteed to fade quickly in theaters (at least domestically), that's not an ideal start, as Variety has reported a $60 million production budget (which doesn't account for marketing and publicity). As a mid-budget sci-fi project, it won't go down as a massive early-in-the-year bomb, but it's not off to a great start.

As far as Chris Pratt being a box office draw, Mercy is definitely a notable step down,,, though, to be fair, this isn't a title that is also part of a major intellectual property like Marvel, Jurassic World, Super Mario Bros. or Garfield. In recent years, all of Pratt's original features have been streaming originals (including Joe and Anthony Russo's The Electric State for Netflix and Chris McKay's The Tomorrow War for Amazon Prime Video) so one has to go all the way back to 2016 to find a proper box office comparison: Morten Tyldum's Passengers.

That title – co-starring Jennifer Lawrence and admittedly released during a very different box office era – made just $14.9 million in its late December opening weekend, but it went on to make $100 million domestically and $302.2 million worldwide. There is no way that is happening with Mercy.

This coming Friday won't see a host of titles that will set the world on fire (I'll get into specifics a bit later), but I won't be at all surprised if we see a new #1 title, as I suspect there is a rough weekend-to-weekend drop coming in the future for the latest Bekmambetov feature.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Takes A Terrible Slide In Its Second Weekend

Part of the reason why I suspect Mercy will have a rough second weekend at the box office is because of the word of mouth surrounding the film. While it's true that audiences don't seem to be reacting to it the same way as critics (evidenced by a 61-point differential in scores on Rotten Tomatoes), movie-goers aren't exactly loving it either, as illustrated by the "B-" grade returned in CinemaScore surveys.

Negative or lacking buzz can be death for a feature – though it's worth noting that it's not always a savior. Just look at what's happening with 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple.

Of the limited new releases we've seen so far in 2026, the new horror sequel has earned the greatest acclaim by far, but it's not saving it at the box office, as evidenced by what has happened in the last three days. After landing in second place last weekend with an underwhelming debut, the film has seen its ticket sales drop by 71 percent. Domestically, the movie made only $3.6 million in the last three days, bringing its total in the market to date up to $20.8 million.

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple is only doing marginally better abroad, and its worldwide earnings so far are up to $46.1 million. After 10 days, that's only about $16 million more than what Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later made in its domestic opening weekend last summer before going on to make $150 million worldwide.

Months After Its Debut, Zootopia 2 Is Still Hitting New Milestones

While most of the results in this weekend's box office report are a bummer, I'll conclude with a happy note and point out the latest milestone hit by Jared Bush and Byron Howard's Zootopia 2, which just completed its ninth weekend in release after debuting in theaters for the 2025 Thanksgiving holiday. After more than two months, the film is still holding on in third place in the domestic Top 10, and it just crossed $400 million in the region.

Zootopia 2 remains ahead of Avatar: Fire And Ash on the domestic chart, and only two movies last year earned more in the U.S. and Canada: Jared Hess' A Minecraft Movie ($424.1 million) and Dean Fleischer-Camp's Lilo & Stitch ($423.8 million). Will it eventually topple both? That may be difficult, but it's not impossible.

Looking ahead, the biggest new movie in theaters this weekend will be Sam Raimi's Send Help starring Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien, and it will be fascinating to see how it ultimately performs up against both Mercy and Avatar 3. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next week to scope out the results!

When weekend box office numbers come in on Sunday mornings, they are understood as estimates. After all, Sunday counts as part of the weekend, and while it's true that buying tickets in advance is a big practice among movie-goers in the modern age, there are also still folks who plan last minute ventures or prefer to make their purchases in person. This in mind, we're going to have to wait until tomorrow to know what film topped the domestic market over the last few days, because the results we currently have register as "too close to call."

James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash has been sitting in the number one spot since it first arrived in theaters back in mid-December, but Nia DaCosta's 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple debuted this past Friday, and it is making a challenge for the crown. For now, they are in a virtual tie – though the Pandora-set blockbuster presently has the slight edge. You can check out the full Top 10 as it stands via early numbers below, and join me after for analysis.

Early Numbers Still Have Avatar: Fire And Ash At The Top Of The Domestic Box Office

We are now five weekends into Avatar: Fire And Ash's theatrical run, and things continue to go swimmingly for the blockbuster – and things will look even rosier if it remains ahead of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple when the smoke clears. The movie's predecessor, 2022's Avatar: The Way Of Water, was able to keep collecting box office crowns until the first weekend of February 2023 (when it fell to M. Night Shyamalan's Knock At The Cabin and Kyle Marvin's 80 For Brady), and the seminal title in the series stayed on top until February 2010. As far as legacy goes, it certainly is in the film's interest to stay at number one domestically.

In the big picture, of course, it doesn't really matter, as that's just one detail among many to look at in the powerhouse performance of the 2025 feature. Early results from The Numbers say that it added another $13.3 million to its domestic total over the last three days, and it has made $363.5 million in the market to date. This means that it has now surpassed James Gunn's Superman in earnings (the DC Studios feature made $354.2 million during its run on the big screen), and the latest Cameron feature is now in the top four for the year – behind only Jared Hess' A Minecraft Movie ($424.1 million), Dean Fleischer-Camp's Lilo & Stitch ($423.8 million), Jared Bush and Byron Howard's Zootopia 2 ($390 million and rising).

Avatar: Fire And Ash is easily one of the biggest hits from the previous calendar year, though it's worth noting that it still lags far behind the domestic earnings of the previous two titles in the series. Respectively, Avatar and Avatar: The Way Of Water had earned $493.3 million and $564.6 million by the time they each reached their 31st day of release, and the third movie in the series is well behind their pace.

As I've noted in previous weeks in this box office column, however, the constant silver lining when it comes to these films is that the domestic earnings are mostly a bow on top of the theatrical journey: the big money comes from overseas. Only 25-30 percent of the worldwide ticket sales have come from the United States and Canada, and that pattern has continued. The title is still continuing its march towards trying to become just the eighth movie in history to make over $2 billion.

At present, Avatar: Fire And Ash's cumulative total stands at $1.318 billion, which is good enough to make it the 23rd biggest film of all time (obviously no accounting for inflation). It has now surpassed David Yates' Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 ( $1.312 billion) and it will soon move past Rian Johnson's Star Wars Episode VIII: The Last Jedi ($1.322 billion).

28 Years Later: The Bone Temple Doesn't Have A Box Office Weekend To Match Critical Acclaim

It should go without saying that battling for first place is not where 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple wants to be following its theatrical debut, but that's where things stand, as reported early numbers say that the movie is earning $13 million this weekend a.k.a. less than a half-million shy of what Avatar: Fire And Ash made in the last three days. It's the second biggest opening weekend for a title in the horror series, but it's a bit underwhelming.

You can see why it's underwhelming when you look at how the movie's performance compares to what Danny Boyle's 28 Years Later did last summer. Had the new sequel been able to match the $30 million earnings of the 2025 title, it would have easily defeated the James Cameron sci-fi epic over the last three days, but it wasn't able to generate that kind of excitement. Part of the blame can be put on the season (people don't go to the movies as much in January as they do in June), but it's still not the result that the filmmakers and studio were surely hoping for – particularly given that critics have offered the horror sequel near-universal praise (CinemaBlend's Nick Venable delivered a four-and-a-half star review of 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple)

There is positive news. Per Deadline, the reported production budget of the new movie was $63 million, meaning that it still has a path toward profitability at the global box office (its worldwide earnings presently stand at $29.2 million). Also, the franchise also got the green light for the planned third movie last week, so the vision pitched by Danny Boyle and Alex Garland will be completed and not cut short by these less-than-satisfactory results.

What will next week bring when Timur Bekmambetov's Mercy starring Chris Pratt arrives and challenges the titles in the Top 10? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next weekend for my latest box office column to find out, and in the meantime, you can get a preview of what's heading to theaters in the coming weeks and months via our 2026 Movie Release Calendar.

Last weekend was technically the first of 2026, and it was a cake walk for James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash. With holiday releases still going strong, no new movies arrived in wide release, allowing the sci-fi epic from mid-December to win its third straight box office crown. This weekend, on the other hand, was a bit different, as the Pandora-set feature faced off against both Johannes Roberts' Primate and Ric Roman Waugh's Greenland 2: Migration. Still, however, the results ended up pretty much the same.

While the Top 5 at the domestic box office this weekend got a bit of a shakeup thanks to the new releases, the title sitting at the top has remained consistent, as Avatar 3 continues its journey to become remembered as one of the biggest blockbusters of 2025. You can check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Avatar: Fire And Ash Rules The Box Office Again As It Continues Its Trek Toward $2 Billion Globally

The question of whether or not Avatar: Fire And Ash would successfully make $1 billion at the global box office was answered last Sunday when the blockbuster became the 59th movie in history to pass that benchmark. Whether or not it will be able to join its franchise predecessors in the much more exclusive $2 billion club is a whole other deal that still hasn't resolved – but the last few days have certainly helped the movie climb toward that special goal.

According to The Numbers, Avatar: Fire And Ash added an estimated $21.3 million to its domestic total this past weekend, which marks a healthy 49 percent drop from last weekend's earnings and brings the title's domestic gross to date up to $342.6 million. It's a notable number particularly because it means that the blockbuster has now pushed past Jon M. Chu's Wicked: For Good in the 2025 rankings (notable because the musical is still playing in 1,142 locations in the market and continues to add to its total).

Avatar 3 has now laid claim to a spot among the Top 5 movies of last year in the United States and Canada, as its sits behind only Jared Hess' A Minecraft Movie ($424.1 million), Dean Fleischer-Camp's Lilo & Stitch ($423.8 million), Jared Bush and Byron Howard's Zootopia 2 ($378.8 8 and rising), and James Gunn's Superman ($354.2 million). A Top 3 finish by the time it's done playing in theaters seems very doable.

As for the race toward $2 billion, that $342.6 million combines with the $888 million earned so far in foreign markets to result in a $1.23 billion total for the film worldwide so far. That's enough for it to rank as the 27th biggest movie of all time (not accounting for inflation), as that total puts it ahead of the $1.215 billion earned by Shane Black's Iron Man 3 in 2013.

As indicated by the figures above, the ratio of domestic box office versus foreign box office has always skewed toward the latter for the Avatar movies, and overseas markets will ultimately determine whether or not it will be history's eighth film to earn $2 billion-plus. That being said, it's noteworthy that the new James Cameron feature isn't demonstrating the same kinds of legs as its predecessors in the U.S. and Canada. While it's making plenty of money to justify a future for the series, it's fading much faster than Avatar: The Way Of Water did in 2022/2023.

By the 24th day of its release, the second Avatar blockbuster had made $517.6 million. That's considerably more than where Avatar: Fire And Ash presently sits in the same amount of time. What will that mean as we get deeper into January and eventually cross into February? It's something to keep an eye on.

Primate Scares Up Enough For Second Place, But It May Fizzle Fast

Let's finally talk about some 2026 movies, shall we? While we are still waiting for the first new release from the new year to topple Avatar: Fire And Ash and win a box office crown, it can at least be said that Primate put on a good show this weekend – enough for second place.

An $11.3 million start wouldn't be great for a major blockbuster, but Johannes Roberts' ape-centric creature feature is playing with the ace up its sleeve called "not having a big budget." Per Variety, Primate was made with a $21 million budget, which means that while it's not quite in the black yet on paper, it doesn't have a long road to get there.

Still, there is an open question asking if the movie will have the legs needed to get that limited distance. Primate has gotten a mostly warm response from critics, as professionals have appreciated its B-movie awareness and satisfying gore... but there are signs suggesting that audiences aren't quite as appreciative (a perfect example being the "B-" grade delivered by CinemaScore surveys). Without more positive word of mouth, the film might be staring down the barrel of a rough second weekend.

Greenland 2: Migration Falls Short Of Den Of Thieves Money In Its Opening Weekend

Unfortunately, not able to achieve even a "mixed results" finish like Primate is Greenland 2: Migration, which landed in fifth place in its debut. Movie fans may remember that the title's predecessor was a planned theatrical 2020 release that ended up going to VOD because of the COVID-19 pandemic – and it was ultimately successful enough to inspire a sequel. Unfortunately, box office numbers show that not a lot of people were overly interested in checking out the follow-up on the big screen during its opening weekend.

While Gerard Butler has had success as a January star in the past – with movies like Christian Gudegast's Den Of Thieves series and Jean-François Richet's Plane – his latest has underperformed comparatively. Unlike those past films, Greenland 2 is the first to have failed to reach eight figures, making only $8.5 million domestically in the last three days. Considering that the film reportedly cost $90 million to make (per Deadline), it looks as though it will go down as the first flop of 2026.

How will things change at the box office next week with the arrival of Nia DaCosta's 28 Years Later: The Bone Temple and the wide expansion of Gus Van Sant's Dead Man's Wire? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for my next box office column and analysis of the results.

Happy new year, fellow cinephiles! Looking at the totality of the 2026 movie release calendar, one will note that there are a whole lot of terrifically exciting features on the way in the next 12 months, from Phil Lord and Chris Miller's Project Hail Mary to Denis Villeneuve's Dune: Part 3... but some patience will have to be exhibited for them. As we sit at the end of the first weekend of this fresh year, no new films have yet arrived in wide release – which means that the big headlines at the box office today are all about some 2025 films hitting major milestones.

While 2025 may be over, big releases are still adding to their legacy in theaters around the globe, and this weekend, both James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash and Paul Feig's The Housemaid added an extra figure to their worldwide box office totals. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Avatar: Fire And Ash Crosses $1 Billion At The Worldwide Box Office

Will Avatar: Fire And Ash ultimately be able to join its predecessors and stand among the seven other films in history to successfully hit $2 billion at the global box office? We will have to wait a little while to learn the answer to that very special question, but for now, we can start off 2026 with some exciting news: Avatar 3 has become the 59th film in history to earn $1 billion globally.

The new sci-fi adventure still has some distance to travel if it wants to be dubbed the biggest film of 2025, as it sits on the charts behind the successes of Jared Bush and Byron Howard's Zootopia 2 ($1.588 billion) and Jiaozi's Ne Zha 2 ($2.001 billion), but the latest epic from James Cameron is nonetheless breathing rarified air. According to The Numbers, the blockbuster once again topped the domestic chart this weekend, adding $40 million to its domestic total, and in combination with the money it earned the past three days from foreign markets, the movie has now made $1.083 billion worldwide.

In the United States and Canada, Avatar: Fire And Ash has made $306 million so far, which is slightly behind the pace of both Avatar and Avatar: The Way Of Water. By the 17th day of their respective releases in 2009 and 2022, the former had made $352.1 million, while the latter was up to $425.7 million. By the end of their runs, the franchise's seminal title demonstrated longer legs in the region (earning $785.2 million vs. $688.8 million), and there will be a lot of eyes watching how the third chapter in the series measures up.

As far as its place among the biggest 2025 releases is concerned, the film has now reached fifth place on the domestic chart – presently behind James Gunn's Superman, which finished its theatrical run making $354.2 million. Zootopia 2 (which is still climbing), has made $363.6 million and is now in third place, while Jared Hess' A Minecraft Movie ($423.9 million) and Dean Fleischer-Camp's Lilo & Stitch ($423.8 million) sit at the top.

As I've repeatedly noted in this box office column in recent weeks, however, the big money for the Avatar franchise comes from abroad. To save you doing the math from all of the information presented thus far, those big ticket sales for Avatar: Fire And Ash in the U.S. and Canada represents less than 30 percent of what the movie has made globally.

Combining the box office earnings of all three Avatar movies thus far, they have made $6.35 billion in theaters – which is plenty to justify the outrageous production budgets for each of the titles. There is clearly a lot of excitement being generated around these special blockbusters, and there will be plenty of folks drooling with anticipation when Avatar 4 arrives in 2029 and Avatar 5 hits theaters in 2031 (and yes, those are official dates).

After A Modest Domestic Start, The Housemaid Hits $100 Million Globally

Looking at the earnings of Avatar: Fire And Ash, everything else really pales in comparison, but the big bonus of a late December release date is that it's a period of the release calendar that can launch a lot of big success stories. With a production budget of $350 million (per Variety), Avatar 3 might get a lot of attention for hitting $1 billion at the global box office, but The Housemaid cost one tenth of that to get made, and it just hit a major milestone by making $100 million worldwide.

Adapted from the hit novel of the same name by author Freida McFadden, The Housemaid's success hasn't been super splashy, as debuted in theaters in third place and fell to fourth in its second weekend. Now, however, it is back in third place, and it's notable that its earnings domestically have stayed relatively consistent: $19 million, $15.3 million, and $19.9 million.

In the United States and Canada thus far, it has earned an impressive $75.7 million, and the $57.3 million it has made from foreign markets brings its global earnings to date up to $133 million. It has climbed up to 26th place on the domestic chart for 2025 (having surpassed the $73.2 million made by Joachim Rønning's Tron: Ares during its quick big screen stint), and thanks to the friendly (and lacking) January 2026 release schedule, it has a strong chance of ending up in the top 20.

Speaking of 2026, we will finally be getting the year's first new wide releases this coming Friday, including the Gerard Butler action in Ric Roman Waugh's Greenland 2: Migration and the ape-centric horror in Johannes Roberts' Primate. Will either of the titles be able to successfully compete with Avatar 3 and unseat it from its spot at the top of the box office? It will be an interesting story to follow, and I will have all of the results for you in my next box office column one week from today here on CinemaBlend.

While a strong majority of modern movies tend to fizzle out at the box office following hyped opening weekends, James Cameron's Avatar series finds success in the long game. There is, of course, initial excitement generated when the titles first arrive, but the way the titles become some of the biggest hits of all time is because they keep bringing audiences in week after week. It worked for Avatar, it worked for Avatar: The Way Of Water, and we're now seeing it happen for Avatar: Fire And Ash.

The science-fiction blockbuster had a few films to compete with in its second Friday-to-Sunday run in theaters, including Tom Gormican's Anaconda arriving and Josh Safdie's Marty Supreme going from limited release to wide release, but Cameron's latest work managed to crush them all with a stellar weekend-to-weekend drop in ticket sales from its debut. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

After A Modest Opening Weekend, Avatar: Fire And Ash Remains A Dominant Box Office Force

Last weekend, the opening weekend numbers for Avatar: Fire And Ash were a touch tainted. While the title managed to easily win the weekend against a number of other new releases, ticket sales dropped off significantly from the 2022 performance of The Way Of Water, and there was question about whether or not the 2025 title would be able to showcase the same kind of long legs at the box office that made its predecessors two of the biggest hits of all time.

Looking at what the newly released sequel was able to do over the last three days, it would appear that all concerns have been dispelled.

In the wake of the Christmas holiday on Thursday, audiences in the United States and Canada got hungry for a return trip to Pandora, and the result is another box office crown. According to The Numbers, Avatar: Fire And Ash earned another $64 million over the last three days, which represents a miniscule 28 percent difference from the $89.2 million that it made in its debut. In 10 days, the film has successfully crossed $200 million domestically, and is now sitting at $217.7 million earned in the market. That means it is already the fifteenth highest grossing 2025 title in the region, having now earned more than Zach Cregger's Weapons ($151.6 million).

Pace-wise, this means that Avatar 3 has continued to outpace the original Avatar from 2009. By its tenth day in theaters, Avatar was sitting at $212.7 million earned.

As I noted in last week's box office column, however, while any money made by Avatar: Fire And Ash domestically is great, the franchise is truly a powerhouse overseas, and it continues to wow audiences abroad. That aforementioned $217.7 million made in the United States and Canada presently only represents 28.6 percent of what the blockbuster has made worldwide: $760.4 million.

In the last week, the film has managed to hop over some of the biggest titles of 2025 in the worldwide box office rankings, including James Gunn's Superman ($616.8 million), Joseph Kosinski's F1 ($630.6 million) and Dean Deblois' live-action remake of How To Train Your Dragon ($636.3 million). Avatar 3 is now the seventh highest grossing movie of the year sitting behind Haruo Sotozaki's Demon Slayer: Kimetsu no Yaiba – The Movie: Infinity Castle, but it is expected to continue to climb higher and higher until it joins the other billion dollar titles of the year: Jiaozi's Ne Zha 2, Jared Bush & Byron Howard's Zootopia 2, and Dean Fleischer-Camp's Lilo & Stitch.

Because studios tend to not deliver their biggest titles to theaters in January, the expectation is that Avatar: Fire And Ash will continue to dominate through the early weeks of the 2026 movie release calendar. But will it ultimately be able to reach the $2 billion mark of its predecessors? Time will tell, and it's a development I'll be keeping a close eye on for at least the next month.

Zootopia 2 Gets A Nice Boost From The Holidays, Returns To Second Place

In addition to Avatar: Fire And Ash, last weekend saw a number of other new titles arrive in wide release domestically – including Brent Dawes and Phil Cunningham's David, Paul Feig's The Housemaid and Derek Drymon's The SpongeBob Movie: Search For Squarepants. The draw of all those titles managed to push Zootopia 2 from first place to fifth place... but much like how the Walt Disney Animation Studios release managed to rebound after losing its box office crown to Emma Tammi's Five Nights At Freddy's 2, the animated adventure has proven to be very resurgent.

Zootopia 2 made $14.8 million last weekend, and in the last three days it played in 170 fewer locations, and yet, its ticket sales saw a 35 percent boost. The film made added another $20 million to its coffers in the U.S. and Canada since Friday, which brings its total in the market up to $321.4 million. It has now surpassed the earnings of Ryan Coogler's Sinners and is the sixth biggest domestic title of 2025, and only about $20 million separates it from Jon M. Chu's Wicked: For Good to take over fifth place.

Anaconda Barely Places In The Top 5 Despite The Star Power Of Jack Black And Paul Rudd

There are a number of winners to be pointed at in the box office Top 10: in addition to everything highlighted above, The Housemaid only saw its ticket sales drop 19 percent weekend-to-weekend, and a $17.5 million take for Marty Supreme in its first week of wide release is a solid haul. Not quite fitting into that categorization, however, is the new meta comedy Anaconda. The movie features some great headliners in Jack Black and Paul Rudd, but it had to settle for fifth place in its big screen debut, and it only made $14.6 million.

It's not a great result for a film with a reported budget of $45 million (per Variety), and in addition to getting a rough response from critics, surveys returned to CinemaScore resulted in a middling "B" grade – suggesting that folks aren't going to rush out and tell their friends that it's a must-see feature. During this time of the year, it may still find an audience and grow some legs, but it's a tough start.

This brings me to the end of box office reporting in 2025... but I'll be back next Sunday to kick off 2026 with a fresh column continuing to follow the big screen journeys of all the aforementioned titles and more. Be sure to join me back here on CinemaBlend then!

The Avatar franchise is less than 20 years old, and yet, the standards for the films at the box office are very different than for other releases. It's the inevitable result of the first movies in a series becoming two of the biggest worldwide box office successes in history. When that happens, expectations for future releases changes, as there is anticipation that all subsequent releases will earn similar superlatives. It's the biggest question mark surrounding James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash, and its run on the big screen kicked off this weekend, and it will be fascinating to see what kind of legs it has.

Analyzing the release of Avatar 3 isn't the only subject to cover in this week's box office report, however, as a significant number of new releases dropped in theaters on Friday, and they made interesting competition for the blockbuster science-fiction epic – including Paul Feig's The Housemaid and Derek Drymon's The SpongeBob Movie: Search for SquarePants. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Avatar: Fire And Ash Fails To Make A Domestic Splash As Big As The Way Of Water, But Money Is Rolling In Worldwide

When James Cameron's Avatar: The Way Of Water arrived in theaters in 2022, it was a special event. The sequel was more than a decade removed from its predecessor, and that time allowed hype to build and build and build – ultimately resulting in the film make $2.3 billion at the global box office (following the $2.9 billion success of the 2009 movie). This weekend, we learned the difference between 13 years of anticipation versus three.

While Avatar: The Way Of Water had what was the fifth biggest opening weekend of 2022 when it made $134.1 million in its first three days of release, Avatar: Fire And Ash had what will go down as the ninth biggest blockbuster debut of 2025 (per The Numbers), having made $88 million domestically since arriving in cinemas on Friday. That's more than what Dean DeBlois' live-action remake of How To Train Your Dragon made when it premiered during the summer ($84.6 million), but should the early numbers hold firm it's a smaller splash than what we saw for Julius Onah's Captain America: Brave New World in February ($88.8 million) and Gareth Edwards' Jurassic World Rebirth in July ($92 million).

The domestic numbers aren't all that impressive when compared to the performance of The Way Of Water, but one must not forget where the vast majority of box office numbers come from with Avatar films: overseas. There is no questioning that both Avatar and its first sequel were massive hits in the United States and Canada (respectively earning $785.2 million and $688.8 million during their theatrical runs in the region), but those figures in both cases represent less than 30 percent of what the two movies made globally.

Fire And Ash is already seeing a similar ratio play out in its opening weekend box office earnings. The $88 million it has brought it thus far domestically represents just a little over a quarter of the ticket sales from around the world. Foreign markets have seen the blockbuster make $257 million, which puts its present worldwide earnings up to $345 million.

Of course, there's a massive catch when it comes to the box office results for the Avatar features: they are ridiculously expensive movies to make. Variety reports that the 2025 title singly cost over $400 million, and that doesn't including marketing and publicity expenses. There is an expectation that each title in the canon is going to be a global phenomenon, and money is spent with that in mind. Outside of the Avengers movies, no other franchises exist on that scale today.

The Avatar movies have a secret weapon, though, and it's called "January." When it comes to the release schedule of any given year, the film industry tends to spend the first month in a kind of semi-active hibernation, and that has meant that there aren't any major titles to complete with. Fire And Ash may not always be the number one title at the domestic box office in the next five weeks or so, but it will very likely stay in the Top 3, and history suggests that will lead to some impressive final ticket sales numbers by the time it is done with its theatrical run.

Survey results from CinemaScore suggest that Audiences are still very much returning their trips to Pandora, as the new release got an "A" grade to match its predecessors. We'll see if that translates to the legs that will be necessary to ensure a bright future for the planned Avatar 4 in 2029.

David And The SpongeBob Movie: Search For Squarepants Magnifies The Strong Trend For Animation In 2025

It was inevitable that Avatar: Fire And Ash was going to be sitting at the top of the box office, but looking at the domestic results from the second-to-last weekend of 2025, one notes that the reinforce a trend we've seen all year: animated movies are doing really well. It's not a story of total domination, as nine out of the year's Top 10 blockbusters were live-action, but The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants and Brent Dawes and Phil Cunningham's David just a list of solid performers.

In the last three days, the latter, made by Angel Studios, made $22 million (which was good enough for second place), and The SpongeBob Movie: Search for Squarepants made $16 million, landing in fourth. Those are strong starts, but it's possible that they haven't actually peaked yet: with kids out for winter break and limited options on the way in the weeks ahead, these films could join Avatar 3 in demonstrating some staying power.

The Housemaid Is No Match For The Lure Of Pandora, But The Adaptation Has A Strong Debut

That lastly brings us to The Housemaid, which is based on the popular novel authored by Freida McFadden. The film, starring Amanda Seyfried and Sydney Sweeney, had to settle for a bronze medal this weekend, falling in between the aforementioned animated titles, as it made a reported $19 million during its debut.

It's a good start for a title that was never going to top the box office in its debut, and the critical response to The Housemaid has been positive enough to potentially keep audiences curious about it in the weeks to come. It is worth noting that the movie did outperform director Paul Feig's first thriller A Simple Favor, which made $16 million when it arrived in theaters in September 2018.

As interesting as this weekend's box office results are, next Sunday should offer some even bigger surprises, as everything currently playing will be competing with Tom Gormican's Jack Black-Paul Rudd comedy Anaconda, Craig Brewer's musical biopic Song Sung Blue, and the wide expansion of Josh Safdie's sports drama Marty Supreme. I'll be back next Sunday with a fresh column exploring the results, and you can start prepping for the year ahead by checking out our 2026 Movie Release Calendar.

With Emma Tammi's Five Nights At Freddy's 2, Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pictures decided to take a different tactic than the one taken with the movie's 2023 predecessor. In releasing the first adaptation of the popular video game series, the studios decided to go with a day-and-date strategy, making it available for Peacock subscribers and theater-goers simultaneously, but the rough consequence of this call was a 76 percent post-premiere weekend-to-weekend drop. An attempt was made to avoid this fate for the sequel by giving it an exclusive release in cinemas... and sadly, the numbers show that it did not work out well at all.

After dominating the box office last weekend, Five Nights At Freddy's 2 now has to settle for second place, as Zootopia 2 has proven resurgent and has won its second box office crown since arriving in multiplexes late last month. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Zootopia 2 Continues To Be A Massive Hit And Becomes The Second Biggest Worldwide Hit Of 2025

This has been a bit of an odd year at the box office for Walt Disney Studios – perfectly evidenced by the fact that we are now in the middle of December and none of the movies in the worldwide Top 10 for the year are Marvel Studios productions. That's a pretty shocking development – but there are still some wins to celebrate this year, with Jared Bush and Byron Howard's Zootopia 2 being the latest.

After a one week break from the top of the weekend box office domestically, the animated sequel is now back on top, having added $26.3 million more to its earnings in the United States and Canada (per The Numbers). Its resurgence isn't expected to be terribly long-lived thanks to the competition on the way (more on that later), but the long-awaited feature is making the most of its time as the most popular film currently playing on the big screen around the world.

To date, Zootopia 2 has made $259 million domestically, which makes it the ninth biggest film in the market to come out in 2025 – though it is obviously still climbing. Dean DeBlois' live-action remake of How To Train Your Dragon is the title presently sitting in front of it, the Dreamworks title having made $263 million during its entire theatrical run, and earning another $100 million would see it climb into the Top 5 for the year (behind the $339.6 million made by Gareth Edwards' Jurassic World: Rebirth).

Notably, the 2025 movie also continues to outpace the earnings of its 2016 predecessor. By the time that Byron Howard Rich Moore's Zootopia hit its nineteenth day in theaters, it had made $209.3 million domestically, and the sequel is way ahead of that. It's admittedly not an apples-to-apples comparison, as the original had a March release instead of coming out in November, but it remains a good sign for Zootopia 2 given that the original completed its big screen run in the U.S. and Canada making $341.3 million.

The picture only looks rosier for Zootopia 2 when looking at the business it is doing worldwide: less than a quarter of the earnings have actually come from the domestic market. To date, the Disney animated feature has made $877.7 million from foreign territories, which brings its global total up to $1.14 billion. That means that it has now successfully outgrossed Dean Fleischer Camp's Lilo & Stitch (which made $1.04 billion during its time on the big screen this summer).

So far, only one 2025 film has made more money in cinemas this year than Zootopia 2, and that's Jiaozi's Ne Zha 2 – which made over $2 billion (almost all of it in China).

Coming up, of course, is some major competition for the Walt Disney Animation Studios movie... though it is also a bit of a robbing Peter to pay Paul situation: James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash, also a Disney release, is expected to steal attention worldwide when it arrives in theaters this Friday. How will Zootopia 2 fare in co-existence? That will be a question worth examining closely in the weeks ahead.

Five Nights At Freddy's 2 Suffers A Rough Fall As Bad Buzz Takes Its Toll

Now, let's take a look at the rough weekend experienced by Five Nights At Freddy's 2.

When Emma Tammi's Five Nights At Freddy's struggled during its second weekend in theaters back in 2023, a majority of the blame was put on the aforementioned day-and-date release. The thinking was pretty straight forward: die-hard fans of the video game were excited to see the movie on the big screen when it first opened, but anyone else even mildly curious about the title didn't feel compelled to leave their homes to see it when it was available with a few clicks of the TV remote.

Shot callers at Blumhouse and Universal Pictures probably thought that they fixed this problem with an exclusive theatrical window for Five Nights At Freddy's 2, but they overlooked a vital part of the filmmaking equation: they didn't develop a feature that everyday movie-goers would be excited to see. The sequel was always going to be seen as critic-proof in its debut, as fans were going to flock to it regardless of word-of-mouth, but the second weekend is a different landscape: folks on the fence about going to see it had to be convinced, and zero favors were offered by the critical drubbing that FNAF2 received.

The end result of this? A $64 million debut domestically has been followed by a $19.5 million haul in its sophomore weekend – which calculates to a devastating 70 percent collapse. At the end of the day, the movie is still going to be considered a financial success, as Five Nights At Freddy's 2 has made $95.5 million domestically and $173.8 million on a reported $36 million budget (via Variety), but how long can a franchise subsist on what amounts to flash-in-the-pan success?

Looking ahead, all eyes are going to be on Avatar: Fire And Ash this coming weekend, which is obviously expected to debut at #1 domestically – but how much will it make, how will those numbers compare to its franchise predecessors, and how will the title's arrival affect the rest of the Top 10? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for my next box office column in which I will break it all down!

It's no secret that movies for younger audiences tend to be critic-proof. If kids and teenagers are exciting for an upcoming title, it's typically the case that no amount of bad buzz is going to dissuade them buying (or getting their parent/guardian to buy) a ticket. The latest example of this particular phenomenon can be seen in the opening weekend numbers for Emma Tammi's Five Nights At Freddy's 2, which has easily won a box office crown in the last three days... but if one does a bit of digging into the numbers, one discovers that it's not quite the huge win that folks at Blumhouse Productions and Universal Pictures were hoping for.

The Top 10 for this weekend tell a story, but close inspection reveals a few signs of trouble as the industry nears the end of 2025. Check out the full chart below and join me after for analysis.

Five Nights At Freddy's 2 Easily Won The Weekend Box Office, But There May Be Trouble Ahead For The Video Game Adaptation

Going into this weekend, there was no question that Five Nights At Freddy's 2 would debut in the top spot of domestic charts. The franchise has a significant fanbase thanks to the popularity of the video games on which the movies are based, and there were reliable expectations that those fans would show up for the new sequel's arrival on the big screen. As you can see above, the film easily fulfilled that prophecy, forcing Jared Bush and Byron Howard's Zootopia 2 to settle for a silver medal following its strong Thanksgiving debut (more on that in a bit)... but the results also aren't exactly what the industry was hoping for from the blockbuster December feature.

According to early figures reported by The Numbers, Five Nights At Freddy's 2 made $63 million in its opening weekend domestically, which, at first blush, is quite big. As is typical from projects produced by Blumhouse, the movie didn't have a massive budget ($36 million, per Variety), and it's a better start than a lot of other notable 2025 hits – including Joseph Kosinski's F1 ($57 million), Ryan Coogler's Sinners ($48 million) and Zac Cregger's Weapons ($43.5 million). Upon closer examination, however, one can't help but notice some issues that may have long-term impacts.

The most significant worry point in the film's performance is that ticket sales are far lower than what we saw from its predecessor a little over two years ago. When Emma Tammi's Five Nights At Freddy's arrived on the big screen in October 2023 (prime for Halloween), its theatrical potential was handicapped by the fact that it was given a day-and-date release for Peacock subscribers... and yet, it still managed to make $80 million in its first three days in cinemas. The sequel making approximately $17 million less is a significant step down – especially considering that its playing exclusively in theaters.

There are other troubling signs for the franchise too. While it's true that Five Nights At Freddy's 2 was able to survive an extremely response from critics (I myself gave it one-and-a-half stars in my CinemaBlend review), there are signs that the core audience isn't super happy with the work either. While CinemaScore surveys returned a strong "A-" grade when the original first premiered, the sequel got a middling "B," suggesting significant less satisfaction with the feature.

I expect that next weekend will be the true test for the film. Because the first Five Nights At Freddy's was given a simultaneous streaming debut, its box office numbers tanked in its second weekend (dropping 76 percent), as anyone just mildly curious about the movie opted to just check it out in their living room. That option won't be available for the sequel, and it will be interesting to see what kind of toll is taken by both waning interest and the bad critical buzz.

In the big picture, it appears as though Five Nights At Freddy's 2 won't be as big a hit as the first movie (which made nearly $300 million worldwide during its theatrical run), but it still is going to be a financial success: in addition to the $63 million earned domestically in the last three days, it made $46.1 million from foreign markets, which brings its global total to date up to $109.1 million. Given these numbers, we can likely expect that the big screen franchise will keep going... but it will be interesting to see if the diminished results and response end up inspiring some behind-the-scenes changes.

Significant Competition Sees Zootopia 2 Take A Modest Dip In Its Second Week

The arrival of Five Nights At Freddy's 2 was always going to spell trouble for Zootopia 2. While the films really couldn't be more different, the reality is that the two movie do share a target demographic of young people, and the industry was always going to see a bit of "robbing Peter to pay Paul" with the titles coming out so close together. As such, it isn't shocking to see the Disney Animation Studios title move to second place today following its terrific debut during the Thanksgiving holiday weekend – but it is worth noting that the film is still doing quite well.

A 57 percent weekend-to-weekend drop isn't anything for filmmakers and executives at Disney to cheer about, but Zootopia 2 easily took second place this weekend by earning $43 million, and its domestic total is now up to a shocking $220.5 million. That means it is already the ninth biggest title of 2025, having surpassed the $200.5 million made by Julius Onah's Captain America: Brave New World in the early months of the year. A finish in the Top 5 is almost assured at this point... though whether it can match surpass the $423 million totals of Jared Hess' A Minecraft Movie and Dean Fleischer Camp's Lilo and Stitch is an open question.

Great as those results are, the picture gets even rosier when we look at what the animated feature is doing globally. Zootopia 2 has made a shocking $695 million from foreign markets during its big screen run so far, which means that the film is already on the verge of becoming just the third feature in 2025 to earn over $1 billion worldwide (joining Jiaozi's Ne Zha 2 and the aforementioned Lilo And Stitch). It's a very healthy development for the industry, particularly with us now being just a couple weeks from the blockbuster arrival of James Cameron's Avatar: Fire And Ash.

Before movie-goers head back to Pandora, however, this coming Friday will see the release of James L. Brooks' political dramedy Ella McCay, Bryan Fuller's fantasy Dust Bunny, and Mike P. Nelson's slasher remake of Silent Night, Deadly Night. How will they shake up the new Top 10? Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for my full box office report, and check out our 2025 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the movies that are set to be released before we start the new year.

One week after the musical sequel Wicked: For Good broke box office records with its release, a different franchise has surpassed it to dominate over the long Thanksgiving weekend. Families took advantage of the holiday and kids being off school to catch Zootopia 2 on the big screen, earning $156 million over its first five days on the 2025 movie calendar and an astonishing $556 million worldwide when adding in international earnings.

Zootopia combined with Wicked: For Good to rank as the fourth-best Thanksgiving of all time with approximately $293 million across all films. Take a look at the chart, then we’ll break it all down below:

China Helps Zootopia Sequel To Biggest Global Opening Ever For An Animated Movie

Zootopia 2 was up against some pretty worthy competition as far as animated premieres, including that of its Academy Award-winning predecessor. Domestically, the estimated $156 million accrued from Wednesday to Sunday (per The Numbers) made it the second-best Thanksgiving launch ever, falling short of last year’s Moana 2 — another Disney sequel — which feasted on $225 million over its first five days.

It was internationally, however — and in China specifically — where most of its earnings came from. The animated sequel got $400 million from markets outside of North America to combine for $556 million worldwide. This gives it the best global debut of 2025 so far and the biggest premiere for an animated film ever.

Approximately $272 million of that came from China alone, where the franchise is especially popular, even boasting the recently opened Zootopia Land at Shanghai Disneyland, per Variety. Not only was Zootopia 2 China’s biggest animated movie opening of all time, it’s the country's second-best premiere overall, falling only behind 2019’s Avengers: Endgame.

In the U.S. and Canada, the sequel starring Ginnifer Goodwin and Jason Bateman as the voices of Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde, respectively, outperformed its 2016 predecessor’s first three days. Zootopia opened in March of that year with $75 million, compared to the $96.8 million that Zootopia 2 got from Friday to Sunday. The original went on to amass $341 million domestically and surpass $1 billion worldwide — not to mention its Oscar win for Best Animated Feature.

The original movie’s success was definitely a factor in how excited people were for the Disney sequel and a return to the titular land of anthropomorphic animals. It also helps that critical response was good — 91% on Rotten Tomatoes, an A on CinemaScore, and a 4-out-of-5-star ranking in CinemaBlend’s review of Zootopia 2.

It doesn’t hurt that movie theaters have been hurting for animated kids content lately, with The Bad Guys 2 in August being the last new release.

Audiences Are Still Enchanted By Wicked: For Good, But This Year’s Thanksgiving Falls Short Of Record-Setting 2024

Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo’s sequel may not have taken top billing in Wicked: For Good’s sophomore weekend, but $62.8 million from Friday to Sunday is nothing to melt down over, as it fell 57% from last weekend. The sequel’s premiere was stronger than its 2024 predecessor ($150 million to Wicked’s $114 million), but Act I of the book-to-screen adaptation had a better second weekend, earning $118 million over Thanksgiving to For Good’s $93 million over the five-day period.

Wicked: For Good is still going strong in international markets, as it nears a big $400 million milestone with $393.3 million after 10 days.

Still, as good as the Jon M. Chu and Disney sequels have been for the box office, they didn’t come close to leading a charge to break last year’s all-time high of $422 million. The 2025 Thanksgiving total of $293 million ranks fourth behind 2024 (Moana 2, Wicked, Gladiator II); 2018 ($315 million from Ralph Breaks the Internet, Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald, Creed II); and 2014 ($294.2 million led by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire).

Eternity And Hamnet See Modest Numbers In Limited Release

Zootopia 2 was the tentpole for Thanksgiving weekend, but it wasn’t the only new release. The new A24 movie Eternity earned $5.2 million over its first five days in limited release. The movie, which stars Elizabeth Olsen, Miles Teller and Callum Turner in an afterlife fantasy rom-com, is receiving high marks from the staff here at CinemaBlend, with some calling it their favorite movie of 2025 and others saying it has the power to restore your faith in the genre.

It will be exciting to see if it can pull into the Top 5 when it expands into more theaters next week.

The adaptation of Hamnet is another one to keep your eye on, as it cracked the Top 10 at No. 9, despite being shown in just 119 theaters. Best Director Oscar-winner Chloé Zhao brings us a historical drama about William Shakespeare, giving a fictionalized account of how the death of his 11-year-old son Hamnet affected his marriage and inspired Hamlet.

The film stars Jessie Buckley and Paul Mescal and is expected to be a major contender at the upcoming Academy Awards, so watch for this one when its wide release hits December 12.

The year may be coming to a close, but don’t turn all of your attention to the 2026 movie releases just yet. There’s still plenty to look forward to in December, including Five Nights at Freddy’s 2 next weekend and Avatar: Fire and Ash on December 19. You can be sure we’ll be here every Sunday breaking down all the box office news.

It’s no surprise that Wicked: For Good — the highly anticipated second half of last year’s Broadway adaptation — takes top billing in this week’s Box Office report, but I’m not sure how many people guessed it would dominate so thoroughly. Not only would you practically never know there were two other new releases on the 2025 movie schedule this weekend, but the musical starring Ariana Grande and Cynthia Erivo vanquished records that were set by Wicked: Part I a year ago.

Take a look at the chart below to see where everyone landed, and then we’ll dig a little deeper into the numbers.

Wicked: For Good Earns $150M Domestically, $226M Globally For Record-Breaking Opening Weekend

Hopes were high that Wicked: For Good, the second half to Jon M. Chu’s two-part blockbuster musical, would at least meet the $114 million made by Wicked in its first three days — which also fell on the weekend before Thanksgiving. It did that and more, earning $150 million to set the new record for Broadway adaptation openings.

It also boasted the biggest opening of a stage musical adaptation internationally and globally, with the $76 million earned outside of North America contributing to an overall haul of $226 million. To compare, the first movie earned $50.2 million internationally for a global total just north of $164 million in its first three days.

Domestically, Wicked: For Good saw the second-biggest opening weekend of 2025, falling behind A Minecraft Movie ($162 million) but ahead of Lilo & Stitch ($146 million). It currently ranks as the 14th top-grossing movie of the year, though it won’t be long before it surpasses Weapons, which stands at $151.6 million, for the 13th spot.

So just how far will it climb through the end of 2025? Wicked: For Good could be defying gravity for quite some time. Despite the movie getting mixed reviews from critics (our own Riley Utley admits to favoring Act I, and even Act II apologist Corey Chichizola couldn’t defend the additions made), it earned an A from CinemaScore, indicating a favorable reaction from moviegoers.

Over on Rotten Tomatoes the general public is also more forgiving than the critics, who gave For Good 70% (compared to Wicked’s 88%), while the audience’s Popcornmeter stands at 95% (the same as the first movie). That means word-of-mouth advertising and repeat viewing is likely to carry it through the end of the year and into 2026.

Wicked: Part I remained in theaters into March 2025, accumulating $475 million domestically and $756 million globally, after all. And, with Act II so far surpassing its predecessor in ticket sales, don’t expect this one to slow down anytime soon.

The Running Man Takes A Dive, Falling 65% In Second Weekend

Meanwhile, a disappointing opening weekend for The Running Man just got worse, which Eric Eisenberg did, unfortunately, predict in last week’s box office report. Glen Powell’s Stephen King remake fell to No. 4 and brought in just $5.8 million — despite being shown in more theaters than every other movie except Wicked: For Good — which is a staggering 65% less than its first three days.

That puts it at $27 million after two weekends, which doesn’t leave much hope for pulling even on Edgar Wright’s reported $110 million budget (which doesn’t include marketing and distribution costs). It’s not getting much help internationally, either, with a worldwide total so far of $48.3 million.

In other Top 5 news, Now You See Me: Now You Don’t dropped to No. 2, also taking a pretty big hit, with its $9.1 million pull marking a 57% decrease over opening weekend. However, Jesse Eisenberg’s series that combines magic and heists historically has made the lion’s share of its money overseas, and that seems to be the case with the third installment as well. After two weekends in theaters, Now You See Me 3 has earned $146 million worldwide after costing $90 million to make.

Rental Family And SISU: Road To Revenge Meet Expectations In Release Alongside Wicked 2

It’s not easy going up against a giant, and the filmmakers behind Rental Family and SISU: Road to Revenge surely didn’t expect to compete with the blockbuster release of Wicked: For Good. Falling at Nos. 5 and 6, respectively, they met expectations that were in the $2 million-to-$3 million range for opening weekend.

Rental Family has gotten plenty of buzz for its lead actor Brendan Fraser, with some thinking the actor might see his name on some ballots again come awards season. It’s got an A on CinemaScore, a Certified Fresh 87% on Rotten Tomatoes (96% from the audience) and an ending that apparently sticks with you. I’m not sure we can count this guy out just yet, as moviegoers could circle back to Rental Family after spending opening weekend in Oz.

My glasses aren’t as rose-colored for SISU: Road to Revenge, however. Its $2.6 million falls behind the first movie’s $3.3 million opening weekend in 2022, although it holds an impressive 96% on the Tomatometer. We’ll have to see if it can improve on that next week.

Only one wide release will hit our screens over Thanksgiving, and it’s got potential to be a doozy. Zootopia 2 premieres Wednesday, November 26, with some high hopes, so meet me back here next Sunday to see how Judy Hopps and Nick Wilde fare against Elphaba and Glinda.

Anticipation is high for big box office results in the final weeks of November 2025, as both Jon M. Chu's Wicked: For Good and Byron Howard and Jared Bush's Zootopia 2 are expected to do big business before and through the Thanksgiving holiday – but Hollywood hoped that the success train could start rolling a bit early with some hyped titles playing this weekend. While not quite as big as the aforementioned musical and animated sequels, Ruben Fleischer's Now You See Me: Now You Don’t and Edgar Wright's The Running Man both hoped to draw movie-goers in over the last three days with their respective brands of splashy adventure. Sadly, things did not go exactly as hoped.

While "flop" is not a word to be tossed around looking at this box office results since Friday, the big new titles didn't get the response that was either hoped for or expected... and adding insult to injury, Dan Trachtenberg's Predator: Badlands ended up taking a big plunge as well. You can check out the full Top 10 for this weekend below and join me after for analysis.

Now You See Me: Now You Don’t Is The New Number One Movie As Franchise Opening Weekend Numbers Slightly Diminish

To be totally fair, nobody expected Now You See Me: Now You Don’t to have a nine-figure weekend. The best start in the magic-centric franchise domestically was pulled off by the Louis Leterrier-directed first, which only managed to make $29.4 million before going on to make $342.8 million worldwide. That being said, it's never a good thing when a franchise is operating with diminishing returns, and that's what we are seeing play out here.

In 2016, Jon M. Chu's Now You See Me 2 made $22.4 million when it opened, and The Numbers is now reporting that the third title in the series has made $21.3 million in its debut. It's clearly not an overwhelming difference, but there also isn't suggestion that audiences were terrifically excited to see the return of the characters after a nine-year hiatus.

The so-so #1 start comes in the wake of the movie getting a very mixed response from critics who got to see it early... though that has been something that the franchise has had to contend with from the start.

It's really in overseas territories where these movies tend to shine, and early numbers suggest that Now You See Me: Now You Don't will keep that pattern going. Only a little more than a third of the original movie's ticket sales came from the United States and Canada, and that ratio only became more severe with the sequel (Now You See Me 2 made $328.3 million worldwide, but only $65.1 million of that was domestic money). Per Lionsgate, the new 2025 movie has already made $54.2 million in 64 foreign territories, bringing its worldwide total to date to $75.5 million.

With a reported budget of $90 million, the film needs to still make quite a bit more to ultimately be labeled a success, but circumstances could be worse...

The Running Man Fails To Meet Modest Expectations At The Box Office

Hollywood is always on the lookout for the next big stars who will automatically generate box office, and after the $200 million-plus success of Will Gluck's Anyone But You, the industry had high hopes for Sydney Sweeney and Glen Powell. Unfortunately, this fall has been treacherous for the actors. First, David Michôd's Christy failed to do any business last week (arriving in wide release but failing to crack the Top 10), and now The Running Man has found itself off to a rough start.

Despite the star power of Powell as the lead of the new Stephen King movie, the action/adventure film only managed to make $17 million in its first three days despite reported expectations/hopes that it would earn over $20 million. It's problematic principally because of the movie's cost, as Varity says that the production budget was $100 million (which doesn't include publicity and marketing costs).

It's a tough result particularly because The Running Man is a title that really could have used a strong opening weekend. In addition to the fact that there is plenty of notable competition on the way, the film only managed to earn modest buzz from critics (I personally gave it three-and-a-half stars in my CinemaBlend review... but I also really hate what it does with the ending). The mediocre "B+" grade delivered from CinemaScore surveys suggests that word of mouth isn't going to be rampant, and that could mean I'll be reporting on a significant sink in ticket sales this time next week.

Predator: Badlands Takes A Rough Fall After Its Exciting Start

What will the box office numbers for Now You See Me: Now You Don't and The Running Man look like next week? I hate to say it, but my sad prediction is that we can expect a fall akin to what has happened to Predator: Badlands. Last Sunday, the film generated some very positive headlines as it managed to have the best opening weekend in the history of the Predator franchise... but a $40 million start has been followed by a tough 68 percent drop.

Given the aforementioned new releases, it's not a shock that Predator: Badlands fell to third place after winning the box office crown in its debut, but there were definitely hopes that it would make more than the $13 million it earned domestically in the last three days. To date, it has made $66.3 million at home and $70 million overseas, equating to a $136.3 million gross. That's enough for it to rank as the second highest grossing title in the franchise, behind only Shane Black's The Predator from 2018 (which finished its theatrical run making $159.5 million) and Paul W.S. Anderson's Alien vs. Predator from 2004 ($172.5 million).

Looking ahead to next week, the box office is preparing for the arrival of a wrecking ball, as Wicked: For Good is playing in wide release starting Friday, and hopes are high that it will perform even better than its predecessor from 2024. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday to check out the results, and head over to our 2025 Movie Release Calendar to discover all of the big titles on the way between now and the end of the year.

In 2022, a big pivot was made with the Predator franchise. Following a pair of box office disappointments in Nimrod Antal's Predators and Shane Black's The Predator, the decision was made for Dan Trachtenberg's Prey to be a streaming release... and it ended up being both a hit with critics and extremely popular. With this success accomplished, a gamble with Trachtenberg's live-action follow-up, as Predator: Badlands was made with the big screen in mind... and now it looks like it's going to be the biggest success in the history of the series.

The box office needed a big splash following the awful ticket sales numbers from the Halloween weekend seven days ago, and that's exactly what it has gotten in the form of the new Predator entry. The sci-fi/action blockbuster arrived as the biggest new release from Hollywood on Friday, and audiences properly responded by easily making it the new number one movie domestically. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Predator: Badlands Has The Best Opening Weekend In The Franchise's Near-40-Year History

Predator: Badlands actually a gamble in many ways. In addition to the deadly Yautja species making the return to the big screen, the film is the first to make one of the extraterrestrial warriors into a protagonist, and the feature is the first in the canon to sport a PG-13 rating (which comes thanks to the movie having plenty of violence but zero human characters). There were no guarantees that these swings would pay off, but opening weekend numbers and reactions say that it has.

Early last week, positive praise from critics put Predator: Badlands on a nice buzz wave (CinemaBlend's Sarah El-Mahmoud gave it three-and-a-half stars in her review), and the end result has been substantial ticket sales. Earning $40 million – per The Numbers – doesn't exactly make the adventure instantly one of the biggest hits of 2025 (it ranks as the seventeenth biggest domestic debut dating back to January), but it is a big deal when it comes to features with "Predator" in the title.

Prior to this weekend (admittedly not adjusting for inflation), the previous biggest domestic debut in the series was Paul W. S. Anderson's Alien vs. Predator, which made $38.3 million when it debuted in theaters in the summer of 2004. Of course, one big thing that the two blockbusters share in common are close ties to the Alien franchise – with the new 2025 movie reaffirming the link between the canons by featuring androids made by the fictional Weyland-Yutani corporation. How much that link played into the new movie's success isn't totally clear.

In addition to getting love from critics, audiences are digging the adventure as well. Per CinemaScore surveys taking by opening weekend movie-goers, the new film earned an "A-" grade – which is actually the best grade that a Predator movie has ever gotten (John McTiernan's Predator from 1987 and Stephen Hopkins' Predator 2 from 1990 both got "B+" results). That's huge, and it's a sign that the blockbuster may see a solid weekend-to-weekend drop seven days from now thanks to positive word of mouth.

Going beyond the domestic market, Predator: Badlands has also earned $40 million overseas already – which is a big reason why the new film is getting set to be crowned as the biggest hit in the franchise. Earning $80 million in three days means that it has already outgrossed both Predator and Predator 2, and it will only need to make $50 million more to outgross Predators and The Brothers Strause's Aliens vs. Predator: Requiem (which respectively made $127.2 million and $128.9 million during their worldwide theatrical runs). The $172.5 million made by Alien vs. Predator is presently the series' biggest success, but the days of that truth may soon be ending.

Predator: Badlands will need to have strong legs if it wants to have the ideal box office legacy that looks to be within grasp – though that won't exactly be simple given the big screen competition that is on the way in the weeks ahead, including a trio of new wide releases coming on Friday. I can promise you that the film's performance will be a subject discussed in my column next Sunday.

Regretting You Isn't A It Ends With Us-Level Hit, But It Is Holding On At The Box Office

When looking at the box office numbers for Josh Boone's Regretting You, it's easy to compare it to Justin Baldoni's It Ends With Us thanks to the fact that both movies are based on Colleen Hoover novels... but the comparison hasn't exactly been favorable. While the latter ended up being one of the biggest box office stories of last year, the romantic drama starring Blake Lively making $349.7 million worldwide, the former hasn't been able to perform nearly as well. That being said, it is holding on in the Top 3 as audiences check it out in the weeks following its debut.

Regretting You didn't make much of a splash when it first hit theaters in late October thanks to competition from Tatsuya Yoshihara's Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc, but the anime title quickly faded following its big opening weekend, and the Hoover adaptation has held on. The movie was in a virtual tie for first place with Scott Derrickson's Black Phone 2 when early box office numbers came in last weekend (albeit it ultimately had to settle for the silver medal), and ticket sales only dropped a comparative nine percent since Friday.

The title made $7.1 million in the last three days, and its domestic total now stands at $38.6 million. Worldwide, the film has made $71 million.

How will the box office Top 10 change seven days from now? One expects that the appropriate adjective will be "drastically," as the current releases will be squaring off with Edgar Wright's The Running Man, Osgood Perkins' Keeper and Ruben Fleischer's Now You See Me: Now You Don't. Be sure to head back here to CinemaBlend next Sunday for my latest column examining how everything shakes out.

We're coming to the end of a very fun and busy weekend. Halloween was celebrated around the country, which means that people were spending time donning costumes to attend parties and go trick or treating – and for baseball fans, the final two games of an all-time great World Series were played in the evenings on both Friday and Saturday. With these sources of entertainment in play, one thing that people weren't doing in the last few of days was going to the movies, and that is very much reflected in the domestic box office results.

With Yorgos Lanthimos' Bugonia being the only new major wide release (expanding from playing in limited markets last weekend), Hollywood didn't make too much of an effort to get people into theaters, and the end result is Josh Boone's Regretting You and Scott Derrickson's Black Phone 2 battling for the top spot in the aftermaths of their respective debuts earlier in October. Check out the full Top 10 below and join me after for analysis.

Regretting You And Black Phone 2 Are Separated By Just $100,000 In Early Weekend Box Office Numbers

Regretting You didn't exactly have an outstanding opening weekend. The film is the latest adaptation of a Colleen Hoover novel following the success of Justin Baldoni's It Ends With Us last summer (which completed its box office run making $349.7 million worldwide), but it didn't make much of a splash in its debut. It had to settle for second place last Sunday, failing to outgross Tatsuya Yoshihara's Chainsaw Man — The Movie: Reze Arc, which made just $18 million. It was a tough start for the title, but between the Halloween holiday being super slow for theaters and anime titles reliably dropping like stones in their second weekend, the romantic drama has a new shot at a box office crown.

The results aren't final yet, but according to The Numbers, early reporting shows that Regretting You is going to be ranked as the new number one movie in America. For right now, only $100,000 separates it and Black Phone 2 in the ranking, so it's possible that things could change when the true figures come in. The Hoover adaptation made $8.1 million since Friday, bringing its domestic total to date up to $27.5 million.

It should go without saying that the box office trajectory of the new Hoover adaptation isn't nearly as exciting as what It Ends With Us executed last summer. By the tenth day of its domestic run in August 2024, the Blake Lively movie had already earned $97.6 million.