The North American box office is not slowing down from its Memorial Day weekend, but Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu didn’t get the memo with its disastrous drop. Obsession went up again in its third weekend, but its One Wish Willow monkeypaw was that despite going again, it wouldn’t be the #1 horror film at the domestic box office made by a YouTuber in his 20s. That’s right, Backrooms opened at #1, making Kane Parsons the youngest filmmaker to ever direct a movie that opened #1 at the box office.
Our first place finish is Kane Parsons debut feature for A24. It’s more a vibe than it is a structural masterpiece, which is ironic considering its main character desries to be an architect. Academy Award nominees Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve are sensational as usual, and the atmosphere of the film is remarkable as Parsons decisions directorially really make the idea of something so large and unknown being so creepy, and tying in trauma responses to the concept of a liminal space works. But it won’t be for everybody in the casual moviegoing audience.
Apparently, it doesn’t have to be, though. The expansion of Parsons YouTube shorts series opened to an approximated $81M, overperforming its expecations. This not only makes Parsons debut feature one of the most successful of all-time, but it more than triples A24’s highest-grossing opening weekend which had been set in 2024 by Alex Garland’s Civil War. It is already A24’s second highest-grossing film domestically of all-time, behind the 2025 Christmas release of Marty Supreme, a Safdie-directed period piece about table tennis starring Timothee Chalamet. This will likely be A24’s first $100M domestic film, and spawn a rare franchise for the distributor, which is actively trying to become a much larger player amongst the studios.
In second place, Obsession has officially toppled Star Wars head-to-head at the box office, despite being out longer. Curry Barker isn’t the first to come from sketch comedy to direct a big horror film, notably Weapons filmmaker Zach Cregger and Get Out’s Jordan Peele, and he won’t be the last by a long shot, with even Stefon himself Bill Hader entering the horror space with a film next year. But, so far, it’s hard to find a story quite like Obsession. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Obsession is the first film to not release during Christmas season and see an increase in both its second and third weekend of wide release since Steven Spielberg’s E.T.: The Extra Terrestrial in 1982. To put into context how long it’s been since what Curry Barker has done last happened, Ronald Reagan in 1982 was in the second year of his first term in office. The WWF Champion was Bob Backlund. Meryl Streep was on only her fourth Oscar nomination (but second win for Sophie’s Choice, after already having won for Kramer vs. Kramer). The number one television show in America was Dallas. The hottest computer on the market was the Commodore 64. I wouldn’t be born for 19 more years, and I’ve already graduated college.
Suffice to say, America is obsessed with Obsession. The film has surpassed $100M domestic, making it the highest-grossing film in the history of Focus Features, on just a $725K production budget. To put the ratio of its performance into perspective, it’s the equivalent of you turning 72 cents into more than $100. NBCUniversal has pulled its digital release from the calendar and extended it to the industry standard 45-day theatrical window, it’s done that well for them.
In third, a film that nobody’s obsessed with, is The Mandalorian and Grogu. The film saw a 70% drop in its second weekend. In an industry where 50% drops are considered standard, Mando has had the exact opposite performance of Obsession. This even represents a higher drop, should the actuals match the estimates, than Solo: A Star Wars Story. Not even at $250M global through its second weekend, it seems very unlikely to reach its ~$415M breakeven point and into profitability territory.
Perhaps some naivety due to the name recognition of Star Wars is understandable, but this had box office bomb written all over it from the day it’d been announced. While Pedro Pascal is a popular actor, and a very good actor, he isn’t exactly somebody that people are flocking to the theatres for with his two biggest roles being streaming shows, specifically his excellent turn in HBO;s The Last of Us and…The Mandalorian. There hasn’t been a Star Wars film theatrically this decade until now and it’s for a character you’ve trained your audience to go watch at home on Disney+, with a lukewarm marketing campaign that didn’t give them a reason to make an exception for this. This shouldn’t be terribly concerning for the future prospects of Star Wars, but if Ryan Gosling’s Starfighter comes out next year and underperforms, the conversation has to be had. For now, it’s just concerning that the executives at LucasFilm thought this was a worthwhile theatrical concept.
At this point, Michael has to always feel like somebody’s watching him. The biopic finished fourth this week, still posting a credible ~$12M. While its release in Russia has underperformed just a tad, it’s still strong enough that with the Japan release, a sing-along re-release that should be on the horizon, and the anniversary of the King of Pop’s passing coming up, Lionsgate will reach the $1M mark for the first time in studio history. The heatwave in Europe seems to have hurt its recent success. It’s currently sitting around $850M. Will its sequel do nearly as well? Probably not, considering all of MJ’s most popular tunes are covered in the first, and the elephant in the room regarding the later part of Jackson’s life is going to be far more divisive amongst audiences.
Finishing our top five, The Breadwinner won copious amounts of bread, to the tune of $7.5M in Nate Bargatze’s first theatrical film. The comedien’s Mr. Mom move may not light the world on fire, but at a $25M budget, it wouldn’t be out of the question to maybe breakeven if it has even halfway decent family film legs. The internal numbers probably aren’t that optimistic though, considering the discounted rates they’re already selling tickets at.
Other newcomers are Pressure, Tuner, and Power Ballad. Power Ballad is only at 10 theatres, in a small limited run, making its numbers skewed, but Tuner has expanded out of the limited release cycle. Black Bear has yet to have a big theatrical hit, but Tuner seems to be doing well for a film that’s only in 452 theatres as its widest release. The film itself is very good, with Leo Woodall and Havana Rose Liu’s excellent chemistry making its romantic angle a strong component of a stressful thriller that can only be akin to Sound of Metal meets Emily the Criminal. Woodall’s role as a piano tuner that uses his sensitive hearing to become a safecracker is fascinating to watch unfold. There’s also a very fun supporting role from 2x Academy Award winner Dustin Hoffman, who at 88 years of age, once again shows why he’s one of Hollywood’s greatest living icons. Pressure made just under $6M, which isn’t a great number, but the D-Day fare released in between Memorial Day and the anniversary of D-Day, features a tremendous performance from the always quality Andrew Scott, and a fun role for Academy Award winner Brendan Fraser, who chews scenery as General Eisenhower.
Other films in this week’s top ten:
#6: The Devil Wears Prada 2. Don’t look the current Twitter discourse of IP moviegoing being dead, because the long-awaited follow up to The Devil Wears Prada continues to perform the way legacy sequels are anticipated to perform. It’s now at well over $600M worldwide.
#8: The Sheep Detectives. While explained in previous DSR Box Office Reports that profitabiltiy isn’t the long-term goal, making audiences aware that Amazon MGM produces quality movies is one of the two primary goals. For this film to end up making a surplus of $50M domestic after opening to just $15M speaks volumes of its word-of-mouth. With strong streaming numbers, the anthrapormophic sheep whodunnit will have done its job in spades for the studio.
#9: Passenger. Passenger saw a terrible 70% drop this week, making profitability for Paramount Skydance unimaginable. That said, Passenger does have some of the worst luck of any recent horror picture. This film had to come between Obsession and Backrooms, which seems to have forced it to capitulate its box office returns. Something a bit more standard wasn’t going to ever realistically compete against these two films.
#10: Mortal Kombat II. Is there anything left to say here? The box office has delivered its fatality.
Coming up in the next few weeks, the summer season kicks off. Having already mentioned E.T., Spielberg is returning to the extra-terrestrial, with Disclosure Day in a few weeks. With tickets already on sale, they aren’t particularly bullish sales wise yet, but its word-of-mouth is tremendous. We’ll find out soon enough if people are starved for the truth.
But this week: Masters of the Universe. is tracking for an underwhelming $25-$35M. The problems here are simple:
The budget: Its budgeted at $200M. How much Amazon paid for this? Unclear, considering Travis Knight has a history of helping fund his own projects when he goes over budget, which isn’t too difficult for him considering his father, Phil, is the founder of Nike and one of the richest people on the planet. But at a $500M breakeven margin, it seems like it may struggle to reach half that.
The audience: Masters of the Universe just doesn’t have the right audience. Its audience was watching for a three span from 1983 to 1985, the same general time period we broke down earlier in our Obsession conversation. Not only that, it was a cartoon marketed strictly to young boys to sell the toyline, meaning it was already niche in its own time. Despite constant attempts to revive the property, its audience is generally just a fraction of 50-year-olds. This was simply never going to become the tentpole people have hoped it could be.
That said, the movie does look promising. DSR will see it on Wednesday at an early access Dolby screening, and give a brief spoiler-free review on our Facebook page. We shall let you know if it has the power.
The other big release this week is Scary Movie, which had similiar initial tracking but seems to have come out ahead. It’s been a minute since the last one, and the nostalgia factor will do heavy lifting, granted, but quite a bit of its performance has to be because the horror genre has given them ample new material to satirize over the course of its absence. This looks to be a much-needed win for Paramount.
Photo credit: A24.
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.