Box Office Report for the Week of May 24

Star Wars is back on the big screen…with a relatively muted reception in The Mandalorian and Grogu. The first Star Wars movie released in theatres in seven years, the film serves as a continuation of the hit Disney+ series, but it doesn’t seem enough to draw audiences back to the cinema in a galaxy far, far away.

The movie opened with the lowest-ever domestic box office for a Star Wars movie, $81.9 million, and $145 million globally. With an approval rating of 62% from critics on Rotten Tomatoes, the movie is destined to become a bigger box office disappointment than Solo: A Star Wars Story. It is also being threatened with having its top spot dethroned by YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Kane Parsons with the release of Backrooms, a highly anticipated horror film based on the videos of the same name, which will star Chiwetel Ejiofor and Renate Reinsve and is set to be released next Friday.

Speaking of YouTubers, Obsession has become the horror movie event of the year, and ticket sales for Curry Barker‘s feature debut have increased to 30%, with the film adding $22.4 million to its global tally of $74 million. This is one of the biggest successes of 2026, after a buzzworthy premiere at the Toronto International Film Festival last year. The film cost between $750,000 and $1 million and went on to gross $73 million at the box office. It’s insane, and already positions Barker as a major voice within modern horror, following the Philippou brothers with Talk to Me and Bring Her Back.

However, not all modern horror movies are successes; André Øvredal‘s Passenger failed to make any tangible impact. Despite Paramount trying to generate the same level of anticipation as many modern horror pictures, the movie received fairly muted reviews from critics and opened with little to no fanfare, landing in sixth place with $8.7 million. While its budget wasn’t high, the movie will likely peter out come next weekend, when Backrooms signals to Hollywood studios that YouTubers might create a New Hollywood 2.0…

Boots Riley‘s I Love Boosters also opened with a muted audience, grossing $3.7 million domestically on a $20 million budget. It’s a shame, because the film is quite good and has received fantastic reviews, but NEON, as a studio, has had great difficulty raising awareness of its movies and giving them the marketing campaigns they deserve. But, hey, they just won another Palme d’Or at Cannes after many pundits were predicting the streak would end with Andrey Zvyagintsev‘s Minotaur taking the top prize, so what do we really know?

Here is the full list of the top ten films of the weekend:

1. Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu (Disney): $81.9M – 4,300 theatres
2. Obsession (Universal): $22.4M (+30%) – 2,655 theatres
3. Michael (Lionsgate): $20M (-23%) – 3,306 theatres
4. The Devil Wears Prada 2 (Disney): $12.5M (-29%) – 3,300 theatres
5. The Sheep Detectives (Amazon MGM Studios): $8.9M (-6%) – 3,207 theatres
6. Passenger (Paramount): $8.7M – 2,534 theatres
7. Mortal Kombat II (Warner Bros): $6.1M (-54%) – 2,726 theatres
8. I Love Boosters (NEON): $3.7M – 1,750 theatres
9. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie (Universal): $3.1M (-30%) – 2,005 theatres
10. Project Hail Mary (Amazon MGM Studios): $2.7M (-33%) – 1,321 theatres

Source: Comscore