jokershady said:

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fist Star Wars movie

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jokershady said:

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Less than a month away from the fist Star Wars movie to be released in 7 years and the following films are beating Mandalorian and Grogu in both awareness and interest….

The Advil Wears Prada 2
Mortal Kombat 2
Scary Movie 6 (comes out ~ 2 weeks later)
Toy Story 5 (comes out ~ 4 weeks later)

Yeeeeeeeesh……thinking the projections I've been seeing are becoming more and more precise…..

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A thought that I've seen posted and I think has some validity is that the 22nd is the start of a holiday weekend, there are no other kids/family movies opening that weekend, and there are no other big openings the week before or after. In other words, while presales are indicating a low opening the big question is will walk-ups from families looking to get out of the house be strong enough to save it?

Disney has to desperately be hoping so right now.

I have no idea if one source is more valid than the other, but BoxOfficePro suddenly revised its Mando/Grogu weekend projection up significantly from $71 m to $90-$100m, not including the Memorial Day Monday. Seems a bit unbelievable so late in the game, but would definitely help the franchise if true.

https://www.boxofficepro.com/long-range-forecast-star-wars-the-mandalorian-and-grogu-blasts-off-to-potential-100m-opening/

There's no world where Mando hits $100M opening weekend.

Or should I say, no galaxy.

great scott....these typos and auto-corrections are happening too much...

that was dang hilarious though!

So it's been an interesting start for the domestic box office so far for the start of 2026! And a somewhat good interesting one!

For starters, I'm doing this to look at 1 main thing…and that is how theaters are performing and is the domestic box office actually showing the potential for growth for 2026. For this I do not care if a movie was profitable or not…it's only about theater monies growth.

And to keep things even, I'm only going to look at "in year releases" and "in season releases." Honestly there's not much difference between the in year/in season and calendar date releases but I kinda like seeing how films contribute towards the season or year they were actually released in without the benefit of carryover….meaning for this, all the money from Avatar stayed in 2025 since that's when it was released….

WINTER
Winter is the first day after New Year's week or weekend through the Thursday before the first Friday in March

2025 gross: $707,149,277
2026 gross: $765,304,045 (growth of 8.2%)

2025 top film: Capt America 4 / $200,500,001
2026 top film: Scream 7 / $121,928,451

2025 movie average: $8,418,443 / 84 films released
2026 movie average: $8,229,075 / 93 films released

So Winter had a pretty good start considering the top film of the season was 80 million below the top film for 2025 and yet the season still showed 8.2% growth YOY. Yes it helps that there were more films released than the prior season, but considering the difference between the number 1 grossing films it's still impressive. Also take a look at the top 5 from each season:

2026:
Scream 7 = 121.9 m
GOAT = 103.3 m
Wuthering Heights = 84 m
Send Help = 64.7 m
Iron Lung = 40.8 m (pretty cool for Markiplier)

2025:
Cap 4 = 200.5 m
Dog Man = 97.8 m
One of Them Days = 50 m
Paddington in Peru = 45.8 m
The Monkey = 39.7 m

Other than the #1 movie for Winter, all the top films for 2026 beat the top films for 2025. Pretty awesome.

Here's the big problem…..This kinda means nothing. Yes this Winter was a great improvement over 2025 but it's like throwing a chair off the Titanic…this season is ALWAYS the lowest in terms of domestic box office as all the other seasons are expected to do anywhere from 1-4 billion….but it's a start….

Another problem….When you compare this to the prior 5 years BEFORE covid…this is still way under for what was happening domestically….to average everything out and compare it to now, here you go:

2026 winter box office: 765.3 m
2015 2019 avg: 1.176 b

2026 winter film avg: 8.2 m
2015 2019 avg: 11.8 m

2026 winter # films released: 93
2015 2019 avg: 100

So we've mostly caught up (at least for this year with this season) on the number of films released prior to Covid, but we're still not even close with matching the old Winter box office. It'll be interesting to see how much growth there is in Spring.

And then……Summer…….(in-season box office for summer posted back to back years of losses…this is an important year for the summer)

Brian Earl Spilner said:

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There's no world where Mando hits $100M opening weekend.

Or should I say, no galaxy.

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agreed. I read the article and it gives no reason why all of a sudden this film should be tracking to make 20-30 million higher than recent predictions….

Insane positive momentum for theatrical. 4 year labor deals, every studio with strong windows, full robust release schedule, @AmazonMGMStudio starting to roll and @ParamountPics gearing up. Even @netflix now in the full wide release theatrical business!! What a turnaround. pic.twitter.com/wo6wKaAgcx

— EmpireCity Box Office (@EmpireCityBO) May 3, 2026

Theatrical is absolutely ripping this weekend locally, domestically and especially globally. @michaelmovie going to possibly finish even higher than estimates and #TheDevilWearsPrada2 with a massive $233m WW opening. This is only the start. 2026 going to blast past $10b+. pic.twitter.com/Z29NDf9Ne6

— EmpireCity Box Office (@EmpireCityBO) May 3, 2026

I saw somewhere that Disney is expecting Mando to open worse than Solo.

Season 3 and Boba Fett really effed this whole thing up, didn't they? (Ive seen neither)

Sure seems like it's gonna be a hell of a summer at the BO.