Following the recent success of the opening weekend of The Devil Wears Prada 2 and the second weekend hold for Michael, excitement is building in Hollywood for a major summer box office. The former secured $76.7 million in its opening weekend, while Michael showed a 44% hold from its $97 million opening weekend, bringing in $54.4 million domestically.
Since 2020, the best summer opening at the box office was in 2022 when Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness amassed a $187.4 million opening weekend domestically. The industry is hoping for a repeat of the summer of 2023, where the domestic box office jumped over $4 billion in the wake of the Barbenheimer craze. This figure was essentially a given for all summer box offices pre-pandemic. This will be no easy feat for the industry- as even though there are 57 films set to go wide this summer in theaters, only 34 are major studio films, meaning that only a little over half of the films releasing this summer will have a serious marketing budget. Looking forward to this upcoming weekend, Anthony D’Alessandro at Deadline highlighted why counter-programming is so crucial.
New Line’s Mortal Kombat 2 is expected to open to $50M, with The Devil Wears Prada 2 looking to hold quite strong, -45%, in the low $40Ms, possibly even giving the Midway Games adaptation a run for its money. Michael will continue to be platinum in weekend 3 with around $30M, followed by Amazon MGM Studios’ Sheep Detective north of $12M and Paramount’s Billie Eilish concert movie between $6M-$9M. It’s summer weekends like this that the industry needs more of.
One thing that may hurt Hollywood in the hunt for the illustrious $4 billion dollar figure is a slow Memorial Day weekend, with the only major motion picture set for release being Disney’s The Mandalorian and Grogu. Currently tracking for an $80 million opening, which would be a major low for Star Wars, there’s zero chance the holiday weekend will match 2025’s all-time record of $329.8 million. That weekend saw Lilo & Stitch open to $182.6 million and Mission Impossible – The Final Reckoning opening to $79 million. Outside of this, Hollywood has done a respectable job of ensuring that each weekend has a major film hitting theaters. The 3 films that will be fighting to earn the top summer movie spot are set to be Disney’s Toy Story 5 (June 19), Universal’s The Odyssey (July 17), and Sony/Marvel’s Spiderman: Brand New Day (July 31). Other major studio films set to release this summer include: Disclosure Day, Supergirl, The End of Oak Street, Moana, Masters of the Universe, and Minions & Monsters. Films that could make a surprise splash unsurprisingly can be found in the horror genre with Scary Movie, Backrooms, and Evil Dead Burn.
For all the latest on the summer box office, stay with us here at MXDWN.
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