What do Star Wars, a YouTuber and sleuthing sheep have in common? They all led to a surprisingly robust Memorial Day weekend box office, after it looked as though the second half of May would turn into a slowdown.
Studio insiders told TheWrap they were projecting $190 million for the four-day weekend, well below last year’s holiday weekend of $330 million. But Monday estimates have the overall box office coming in at $222 million, just below the $223 million recorded in 2022, the year of “Top Gun: Maverick.”
Disney/Lucasfilm’s “The Mandalorian and Grogu” was the obvious No. 1, but wasn’t exactly a record breaker with a $100 million extended opening similar to the 2018 film “Solo: A Star Wars Story.” But theaters did fine without a traditionally “Star Wars”-like opening for the TV adaptation, as five other films contributed at least $10 million this weekend, including Focus Features’ horror hit “Obsession,” which is making some box office history of its own.
“The holdover strength that we have seen over the last several months has been the big theme of 2026,” said Comscore analyst Paul Dergarabedian. “You can buy a big opening weekend, but if audiences don’t embrace a film, they will show it in the holdover numbers. Instead, moviegoers are embracing multiple films that are sharing the multiplex, and that is way more important than the sugar high of a record opening.”
Let’s go through the biggest data points from a box office weekend that managed to dodge a slump and keep a hot streak going.
Is the ‘Star Wars’ fanbase aging?
In the late 2000s, as “Star Wars” fanboys seethed over the prequels, there was concern that the galaxy far, far away would fade into irrelevance without quality new titles to get a new generation of kids desperate to get lightsabers for Christmas. Disney’s series of five “Star Wars” films in the late 2010s, for whatever faults they had, changed that by getting Gen Z kids and teens to fall in love with the likes of Rey and BB-8.
But as “The Mandalorian and Grogu” comes out nearly 11 years after “The Force Awakens,” there are signs that this franchise may be losing the youth, as the data shows an older-skewing opening weekend audience.
According to data provided on Sunday by Disney, 27% of the opening weekend audience was under the age of 25. By comparison, “Star Wars: The Last Jedi,” released in 2017, had an under-25 opening weekend audience share of 37%.
This is particularly worrisome considering that “The Mandalorian and Grogu” was marketed as a family-friendly space adventure, at least more so compared to the more continuity-focused marketing of the sequel trilogy or the darker political allegory of the acclaimed Disney+ series “Andor.”
These numbers may not be a full snapshot of the film’s audience in the coming days and weeks. According to Disney and exhibitor insiders, walk-up ticket sales among families were trending upwards from Friday to Saturday, as the film drew an A- on CinemaScore and an 89% Rotten Tomatoes score with the highest scores coming from kids and parents.
If the word-of-mouth for “Mandalorian” continues to bring out family audiences, then there’s still a chance that it could leg out well. While Paramount’s “The Breadwinner” is coming out next weekend, a fun space adventure with Baby Yoda may prove to have much wider appeal than Nate Bargatze as a hapless dad. And although “Masters of the Universe” might appeal to boys, there really isn’t serious family competition until Disney’s next big film, Pixar’s “Toy Story 5” in late June.
But if the core audience for “Mandalorian and Grogu” is skewed towards general audiences, it may have a rougher time of it in the weeks ahead. After the A24 horror film “Backrooms” next weekend, the trio of “Masters of the Universe,” “Scary Movie” and “The Amazing Digital Circus” will serve as competition for different generations of non-family moviegoers and could combine to peel away casual audience interest. Such is the state of “Star Wars” in 2026, where it now has to play by the same rules as nearly every other blockbuster franchise.
For now, at least, Lucasfilm will likely have to lean on 2027’s Ryan Gosling-fronted “Star Wars: Starfighter” to try to ignite a new fandom for this franchise from Gen Alpha.
“Obsession” buzz is real — and rare
YouTuber-turned-filmmaker Curry Barker’s disturbing horror film on male entitlement managed a rare feat at the box office that hasn’t been seen since Angel’s breakout 2023 drama “Sound of Freedom.”
After opening to a solid $17.1 million, “Obsession” surged to a Memorial Day weekend total of $30.3 million, bringing its domestic total to an incredible $60 million after just 11 days. The film’s $23.9 million 3-day total marks a 39% increase from its opening weekend, the same percentage spike of “Sound of Freedom” as it went from a $19.6 million 3-day opening on Fourth of July weekend to $27.2 million on its second weekend.
The film was acquired by Focus Features for a reported $15 million.
Back in the ’70s and ’80s and as recently as the early 2000s, it was common for big hits to have low opening weekends but to see their grosses increase in later frames. As we noted in our “Star Wars” box office history, the franchise’s debut film in 1977 was No. 1 on the charts from its seventh to its 22nd weekend.
But in the modern box office, any second weekend increases tend to come from films that open on the weekends before Thanksgiving or Christmas, with the surge coming from holiday moviegoers with more time on their hands who hear about the film from early word-of-mouth spread by opening weekend audiences. The 2017 holiday hits “The Greatest Showman” and “Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle” are the greatest examples of this.
But an instance of this second weekend bump happening outside of the winter holidays is extremely rare, requiring a strong indie film that isn’t on audiences’ radar before release but explode organically after they come out. “Sound of Freedom” did that so well that Angel is now an established indie distributor, and now “Obsession” could pass the likes of “Nosferatu,” “Brokeback Mountain” and “Downton Abbey” to become Focus Features’ highest grossing film ever off of this buzz.
“It’s not often that the No. 2 movie at the box office has a bigger story than the No. 1,” said Dergarabedian. “Focus didn’t know that this film would jump 39%, but putting it in front of Memorial Day weekend was the absolute sweet spot to achieve that.”
That’s not a guarantee, though. A24’s “Backrooms” is coming into theaters with much more pre-release buzz than “Obsession” did thanks to the cult fanbase for 20-year-old filmmaker Kane Parsons’ microbudget, lo-fi YouTube horror series, aiming for a $20 million opening weekend. That puts it in direct competition with “Obsession” and could take away its staying power.
But even if that happens, “Obsession” is still a remarkable success for Focus, tapping into the indie horror audience that A24 and Neon have found great success with through films like “Midsommar” and “Longlegs.” Actress Inde Navarette has become an instant horror star with her disturbing performance as a bewitched woman forced to become her friend’s obsessed girlfriend due to his selfish wish, and fans of the genre are piling in to see what the fuss is about.
“I think the best that both A24 and Focus can hope for is a ‘Barbenheimer’-esque double feature hype next week where horror fans decide they’re not going to choose between the two films,” said Dergarabedian.
Everyone’s pulling their weight
And what’s happening with “Obsession” also happened with all of this month’s releases, taking the pressure off of “The Mandalorian and Grogu” to carry the load.
Before inflation adjustment, this $222 million overall total is just a step behind the $223 million recorded in 2022. But how the box office got there is completely different. In 2022, 72% of all box office grosses on Memorial Day weekend came from the $160.5 million opening of “Top Gun: Maverick,” then a record for the holiday. Only two other movies grossed more than $10 million that weekend: “Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness” with $20.3 million and “The Bob’s Burgers Movie” with $14.8 million.
This year, the early May hits “Michael” from Lionsgate and “The Devil Wears Prada 2” from 20th Century continued to hold strong through Memorial Day alongside “Obsession,” contributing $26.8 million and $16.6 million, respectively. Amazon MGM’s critically acclaimed “The Sheep Detectives,” which has been holding well over the past couple of weeks despite a slow start, continues to bring in curious families and cinephiles with its sterling word-of-mouth, adding $12.2 million.
Even Paramount’s “Passenger,” a new horror film that is nowhere near as well received as “Obsession,” added to the weekend in the No. 6 slot with a $10.5 million opening. That makes “Passenger” the first film since “The Great Gatsby” in 2013 to take the No. 6 slot on the Memorial Day weekend charts with at least $10 million grossed over four days.
And with this result, 2026 is set to have the first $1 billion May the box office has seen since the COVID-19 pandemic, putting this summer well on pace to match the $4.3 billion total of summer 2019 before inflation adjustment.
“We haven’t had a bench this deep to kick off the summer in years, and we didn’t even have a Marvel film on it,” Dergarabedian said.
