Project Hail Mary Has A Stellar Debut At The Weekend Box Office While Ready Or Not 2 Fails To Slay

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