Hello! Welcome to TheBox Office Report for the weekend of May 29-31, 2026.
1. Backrooms
Weekend gross: $81.5M Total domestic gross: $81.5M Last weekend: New release Percent drop: NA
Three (near?) unprecedented events converged for a wild weekend at the box office: A 20-year-old director’s A24 horror film landed at No. 1 with a whopping $81.5 million debut. Curry Barker’s Obsession saw its second straight weekend-to-weekend increase. And a Star Wars movie not only failed to hold onto the top spot in its second weekend for the first time ever, but it fell to third.
Everyone is talking about Backrooms this week. Director Kane Parsonsturned his YouTube videos into a film that scored what’s estimated to be the fourth biggest weekend of any film in 2026. Backrooms’s $81,456,295 could easily bump up when the final numbers come in on Monday, possibly nudging it past The Mandalorian and Grogu’s $81,670,433.
Between Backrooms and Obsession, it’s been a very good run for Blumhouse Productions/Atomic Monster, the production companies launched by Jason Blum and James Wan.
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2. Obsession
Weekend gross: $26.4M Total domestic gross: $104.8M Last weekend: 2nd Percent increase: 10
Movies aren’t supposed to make more money with each passing weekend. That’s just not how this ever works. Sure, we see spikes when a studio dramatically increases the number of theaters a film is playing in, but not when those numbers are almost static.
Barker’s Obsession continues to defy those odds. After opening at No. 3 with $17.2 million, the film surged 39 percent last weekend for a $24 million haul, and then jumped another 10 percent this weekend to add another $26.4 million. Obsession has now passed the $100 million mark in North America, and shows no sign of slowing down.
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Weekend gross: $25M Total domestic gross: $137.4M Last weekend: 1st Percent drop: 69
But speaking of slowing down, it appears that the bottom has quickly fallen out for The Mandalorian and Grogu. Dating back to the release of the prequel trilogy, every Star Wars movie released — including the sequel trilogy and first two standalone films — has held on to the No. 1 spot over their second weekends in theaters. Even Solo, the film that everyone loves to say killed Star Wars movies.
The Mandalorian and Grogu not only didn’t stay on top of the box office, it tumbled down to third place. The film’s 69 percent weekend-to-weekend drop is the biggest we’ve seen during the modern era, surpassing The Last Jedi’s 67 percent drop and Solo’s 65 percent drop.
Weekend gross: $11.7M Total domestic gross: $339.9M Last weekend: 3rd Percent drop: 43
After Michael debuted with $97.2 million, I theorized that the film was going to play like a concert film, scoring a massive opening weekend before quickly falling off. I was wrong. People really, really want to keep watching the Michael Jackson biopic. Michael just wrapped up its sixth weekend in theaters, and it’s yet to gross less than $10 million or fall out of the top five.
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Weekend gross: $7.5M Total domestic gross: $7.5M Last weekend: New release Percent drop: NA
I know that Nate Bargatze’s goal here wasn’t to make a critically acclaimed comedy or to actually say something new or unique, but — wow — does The Breadwinner sound bad.
Pop culture writer and critic Matt Zoller Seitz called The Breadwinner “a feature film that looks and plays like a single-camera sitcom puffed up by creative ambitions that no one involved followed through on” in his brutally honest review of the film.
Box office numbers via The Numbers and Box Office Mojo based on Sunday estimates.
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Issue No. 457
Popculturology is written and produced by Bill Kuchman. Copyediting by Tim Kuchman.
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The Omnicosm founder. Snackology, Popculturology and The Cold Open writer. A Rochester, N.Y., native now living in the Washington, D.C., area. Won’t pass up a Genny Cream Ale.
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