Our Box Office Report this week comes a day later due to unforseen circumstances yesterday on my end, but that gives us a unique opportunity to use the actuals instead of the estimates this week. Spielberg expanded his own record while Obsession and Michael broke records held by others. There weren’t any other big releases, though smaller films such as The Furios and Stop! That! Train! debuted in the top ten. Without further adieu, our rankings this week go…
Disclosure Day, which opened to $44.53M. That doesn’t sound like a ton for a name that carries the kind of weight Stephen Spielberg carries, but it does make the third highest-grossing opening weekend for an original film this decade, and in a post-pandemic era, the $93M worldwide opening weekend is a strong start, even if it’s still far from its $300M breakeven point. The bigger problem facing Disclosure Day is that it’s proving to be very divisive, including having one of the lowest CinemaScore’s ever recorded for a Spielberg event, so just how leggy it can be remains to be seen. But for Spielberg, this represents his 18th film to hit number one on a weekend in his career, extending his own record. The second closest is a three-way tie, according to Variety’s archives (and excellent research work from u/sanderso47 on Reddit), between Ridley Scott, Vicente Minnelli, and Ron Howard at 12.
DSR’s review on our Facebook page gave the film a 4/5 and a strong recommend, with a focus on Spielberg’s style all coming together. The film produces the adventure of the originally Indiana Jones trilogy, the nostalgic feeling of the E.T. score, and the premise essentially being Minority Report meets Close Encounters of the Third Kind, through a lens of The Post. But unlike Close Encounters, there isn’t a whimsiness of discovering the unknown as much as there is a question of how to respond to the unknown when it’s revealed. With standout performances from Emily Blunt and Colin Firth, it’s a little surprising this hasn’t been better received.
But that’s not to say it’s the biggest box office story of the week, because everybody’s been obsessed with Steven Spielberg for over fifty years, especially during the summer season. Jaws did create the summer blockbuster, afterall. But every generation has a young filmmaker who takes the world by storm in a horror, and Spielberg’s going head-to-head with this generation’s version of what he had been in 1975 right now as Curry Barker’s Obsession saw only a 25% drop, and in its fifth weekend still is making more than it did in its opening weekend. Finishing second, Obsession is nearing the record set by My Big Fat Greek Wedding for most weekends in the box office top five without ever hitting number one. But it’s already setting records of its own, as this week it hit $286M+ worldwide. This makes it the highest-grossing festival purchase of all-time, but also breaks the record set in 1999 by The Blair Witch Project as the highest-grossing film made for less than $1M. $300M global with $200M domestic seems more than feasible for what will easily be the most profitable film of the year.
While both remained in the top five, our recent discussions on previous BO reports surrounding abnormal drops that sound alarms of 70+% have continued with both our third place and fifth place films, Scary Movie [6] and The Masters of the Universe. We’d projected a massive dropoff last week for both in an article that can be read here. That doesn’t mean the economics are the same, however, as Scary Movie had already made more than enough money to turn a profit despite being an entirely dead IP just a few years ago. The frontloaded nature of Scary Movie isn’t because people don’t want to see the theatrical comedy, unfortunately a message Hollywood is likely going to take away from the drop, as much as it is its C+ CinemaScore, 2.5 Letterboxd score, and 5.4 IMDB score. Those who do like it aren’t particularly loving it enough to go back, and those who don’t are very vocal about it, primarily because in its attempt to provide commentary and humor that pokes at both sides, it misses the boat entirely by having a terminally online idea of what both sides are, ultimately making its political humor niche, and the remainder of the humor outside of it coming across as being written by somebody who doesn’t understand meme culture while commenting on modern memes. These films have always been of their time, but it felt as though the original slew of offerings gave a semblence of relevancy that the last few just haven’t. This dropoff is more damning for its next film than it is this one, as it performed well enough last week to do more than okay, but its quality might scare audiences from coming back. This is the largest drop in the history of the franchise for its second weekend, beating Scary Movie 4 by over 15%. But unlike 2000s nostalgia which is in, ‘80s nostalgia is becoming a thing of the past, but nobody’s told Amazon MGM.
MOTU has yet to cross $90M worldwide and it’s already dropped to $8M domestic in just its second weekend. This clearly doesn’t have the power, but we went into deep detail last week on why it bombed so terribly, and two weeks ago we went into why we thought it might perform like this. Its $500M breakeven point makes turning a profit not only impossible, but likely will make it the largest Hollywood bomb of 2026. That said, we’ve clarified that Amazon and Mattel operate under unusual parameters as they aren’t traditional production studios. If this can be a large enough streaming hit to re-ignite a dead toy line, everybody will be happy enough to perhaps make the She-Ra film they set up in the post-credits. But no, a cartoon from forty years ago that was niche in its own time and only popular with its own niche for two years was never going to justify a $200M production budget in 2026.
Finishing fourth, Backrooms. This saw a 57% drop in its third weekend, and at $11M domestic may just now be running out of steam. But it did cross an important threshold for A24 as it has now grossed $248M worldwide, making it the highest-grossing A24 picture by quite a bit. With hits such as this, The Drama, and Marty Supreme recently expanding their box office track record, A24’s goal of becoming a far more mainstream studio player in the absence of Warner Bros should the Paramount Skydance merger be finalized seems to become feasible by the day, especially if they use the inevitable industry layoffs that come with such a large merger to expand their team and experience. For Kane Parsons, he might have entered blank check territory before his career even truly began.
Our next two holdovers are Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu and Michael. Michael seems to be better off, as its opening in Japan was massive, and it’s eyeing a ~$50M gross in the terrritory. Michael must always feel like somebody’s watching him because the film has now made $932M at the global box office, making it the highest-grossing musical biopic of all-time. It’s only around $40M away from 2023’s Oppenheimer for becoming the highest-grossing biopic of all-time, something it should do with ease as Lionsgate continues their push for a nice, round billion plateau that’ll be reached for the first time in studio history. A film that has not fared nearly as well, which you can read about in previous reports, is Grogu’s big-screen debut. To go back to the Scary Movie conversation, this is a film that didn’t understand the culture around its meme, and should’ve happened six years ago when people were pretending that they liked the Grogu character. It is now tracking below Solo: A Star Wars Story. It won’t be as big of a bomb thanks to its budget, but it isn’t a remotely decent number for the first Star Wars film on the silver screen this decade.
8 and 9 are newcomers The Furious and Stop! That! Train! These are smaller releases in just over 1,000 theatres, for comparison, Disclosure Day opened in nearly 4,000. With the smaller release, a low budget kung fu film and a RuPaul disaster film finding themselves in the top ten is fairly decent, to say the least. The Furious is getting rave reviews, so mixed in with its performance, perhaps Lionsgate will expand it again next week, though we aren’t holding our breathe.
Rounding out the top ten is The Breadwinner. There’s very little actual analysis to give as to why a Mr. Mom rip off starring Nate Bargatze that had already been selling discounted tickets before it even released won’t be making its budget back at the box office.
Looking ahead to next week, the biggest story is obviously Toy Story 5, which is getting early reactions that it’s the best in the franchise. Considering the original trilogy is hallowed ground in the animation world, that’s going to have a high bar to reach. But, it’s being well-marketed and seems to have a great idea, especially following Jessie as its primary focus. With the idea of tablets replacing toys, not only is it a movie that could be exactly what we need right now, but it could provide exceptional depth for the Jessie character because of the backstory with Emily that they introduced in Toy Story 2. Not to mention, shoehorning Woody as the focus when the character left at the end of Toy Story 4 would’ve always felt forced.
This feels like the easiest $1B gross prediction of the year. The question is how much can it make because Inside Out 2 and Zootopia 2 made $1.7B and $1.8B respectively, while Toy Story 4 barely crossed $1B. 2019 was the biggest summer in the history of the box office, so perhaps that’s why the previous installment of the franchise lacked a little bit, but in a streaming-heavy environment, franchises less established in the Disney umbrella than Toy Story are performing at an insanely high level. If this is the same caliber as the original trilogy, who’s to say it can’t make as much as Zootopia 2, if not threaten $2B? DSR isn’t going to go that far yet, but a domestic opening weekend tracking near $200M, it could theoretically make half a billion worldwide in five days.
Other films opening are A24’s The Death of Robin Hood, Focus Features Girls Like Girls, and NEON’s Leviticus..
Photo credit: NBCUniversal.
Jameus Mooney is an entertainment writer for Comicbook Clique, having covered the entertainment industry for years. You can follow him on Twitter here, and Letterboxd here. You can also listen to his horror podcast, The 2:17 Horror Podcast, at the DeathArts XIII YouTube channel.