Mandalorian Melts From Horror’s Memorial Day Heat - Weeks 4-5

 There’s a lot of lore surrounding Memorial Day Weekend as one of the biggest movie weekends of the year. While we’ve learned “huge weekends” can happen at any time now, it doesn’t make the weekend any less of a “Show us what you’ve got” period… and, boy, did they show us.

The Mandalorian and Grogu showed that “This Is The Way” to an $81.7 million opening weekend. That is almost $100 million less than the last Star Wars film debuted with in 2019, The Rise of Skywalker. Any hope that a “sluggish” start, in comparison to other films from a galaxy far, far away, would be offset by stronger holds in following weekends was dashed after the film collapsed 70% in Week 2. 

Maybe all of this will be forgotten when a new Star Wars film with Ryan Gosling comes out next year… but until then, the force is not strong with this franchise.   

Meanwhile, the real story of the past two weeks has been the wave of indie horror hits Obsession and Backrooms. Often franchise films like The Conjuring or Scream can have big openings and then come crashing down the following weekend. Instead, Obsession has now become the first movie since E.T…. That’s right, E. Freaking T…. to see its weekend gross climb for two straight weekends. It’s already at $104 million and it literally cost $1 million to make. Crazy!

On top of that, with the plethora of horror films already released this year, it’s common for one to fall off as soon as the next one arrives. Instead, Backrooms exploded for an $81 million debut while Obsession’s business still climbed. Together they had a $107 million weekend! If this is what the kids want, why did they spend $200 million to make a He-Man movie?!

With the line around the block to visit the haunted house, it made theaters very empty that were showing alternative things. The Breadwinner won nothing with a stale $7.3 million start. Pressure got squeezed with a $5.8 million opening. Likewise, I Love Boosters has yet to find who loves them with a $7 million 10-day total. 

As far as the pool goes, if you bet on Prada performing better than Mando, you’re in great shape. If you were like me and bet the opposite, well… that’s scarier than anything you’ll find in Obsession and Backrooms. Sigh.

 

The Top Five If Today Was Labor Day:

#1. The Devil Wears Prada 2 - $209.3 million

#2. The Mandalorian and Grogu - $136.8 million

#3. Obsession - $105.8 million

#4. Backrooms - $81.4 million

#5. Mortal Kombat II - $77.8 million