👋 Good morning! A new UK study dropped a stat that should embarrass someone in a studio greenlight meeting: top films over the past three years were more likely to star a man named Chris than a woman over 60. Oh, and four times more likely to star a talking animal.
Hope the long weekend was good to you. We're back with your post-holiday rundown, Memorial Day box office numbers included. 👇
BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN
🎟️ This is the way… to a modest Memorial Day…
‘Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu’ (Disney / Lucasfilm)
| 4-DAY WKND TOTAL $221M| VS. 2025 -32% | |
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu NEW Disney / Lucasfilm · $100M 4-day / $82M 3-day domestic weekend · Global total: $163M · Budget: $165M Jon Favreau's Baby Yoda movie landed just under 'Solo's' $84.4M 3-day, making it the lowest Disney-era Star Wars opening. With expectations recalibrated and a $165M budget (roughly half of 'Solo's'), though, that's a result Lucasfilm can work with. The A- CinemaScore and 88% RT audience score are the numbers to watch. | |
Obsession WK 2 Focus Features · $30.4M 4-day / $22.4M 3-day (+30%) domestic weekend · Domestic total: $60.7M · Global total: $74M · Budget: $1M The story of the weekend, honestly. A 30% second-weekend increase in wide release is virtually unheard of. Jason Blum put it plainly on X: "This doesn't happen in horror." With a ~$1M budget, Barker's horror romance has already earned roughly 74x its production cost. | |
Michael WK 5 Lionsgate · $26.9M 4-day / $20M 3-day (-29%) domestic weekend · Domestic total: $321.1M · Global total: $788M · Budget: $200M Five weekends in and 'Michael' is still very much a thing, closing in on 'Bohemian Rhapsody' ($911M) for the all-time music biopic crown. | |
The Devil Wears Prada 2 WK 4 20th Century Studios · $16.5M 4-day / $12.6M 3-day (-37%) domestic weekend · Domestic total: $200M · Global total: $604M · Budget: $100M | |
The Sheep Detectives WK 3 Amazon MGM · $12.8M 4-day / $9M 3-day (-6%) domestic weekend · Domestic total: $47.4M · Global total: $86M · Budget: $75M Aside from 'Obsession's' outright second-weekend growth, the cleanest hold of the weekend at -6% in week three. Still needs to keep those legs to make Amazon MGM whole on $75M. | |
Passenger NEW Paramount · $10.5M 4-day / $8.7M 3-day domestic weekend · Global total: $15.3M · Budget: $15M André Øvredal's demonic-stalker thriller opened to modest but serviceable numbers, and a $15M budget softens the landing considerably, though mixed reviews (45% RT) and a B- CinemaScore point to a short theatrical run. | |
Mortal Kombat II WK 3 Warner Bros. · $7.7M 4-day / $6.2M 3-day (-59%) domestic weekend · Domestic total: $74.3M · Global total: $119.5M · Budget: $80M | |
I Love Boosters NEW Neon · $4.6M 4-day / $3.72M 3-day domestic weekend · Budget: $20M Strong reviews (91% RT), mixed audience grades (B CinemaScore). Feels like a 'Sorry to Bother You' situation (Boots Riley's 2018 debut, another sharp-edged satire that found its crowd but not a wide one), which topped out at $17.4M domestic. | |
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie WK 8 Universal · $4.1M 4-day / $3.2M 3-day (-42%) domestic weekend · Domestic total: $424.6M · Global total: $980M · Budget: $110M | |
Project Hail Mary WK 10 Amazon MGM · $3.5M 4-day / $2.7M 3-day (-41%) domestic weekend · Domestic total: $340.3M · Global total: $675M · Budget: $248M gross | |
The bigger picture: Memorial Day weekend came in well below last year's all-time record, but that record was basically a 'Lilo & Stitch' anomaly. Strip that out and this weekend holds up fine against pre-pandemic Memorial Days. On the whole year, though: domestic grosses are running 14% ahead of 2025 heading into summer, and that's the number the industry is actually feeling good about.
CLOSEUP
🇫🇷 The 79th Cannes is a wrap…
'Fjord' Palme d'Or winner Cristian Mungiu and cast on stage at the closing ceremony. (Stephane Cardinale/Getty Images)
The jury has spoken. After two weeks in the south of France, Park Chan-wook's nine-person jury handed out the prizes Saturday night. Here's how it all shook out.
The winners…
Palme d'Or: Cristian Mungiu's 'Fjord' (Neon) takes it, making him only the tenth director ever to win the Palme twice. Sebastian Stan and Renate Reinsve star as a Romanian-Norwegian couple whose planned fresh start goes sideways when they get caught up in a child abuse case with the Norwegian social system. And Neon just keeps winning: seven Palmes in a row now, going back to 'Parasite' in 2019.
Grand Prix: Andrey Zvyagintsev's 'Minotaur' (MUBI) gets the Grand Prix, his first film in nearly ten years. An anti-Putin neo-noir he shot in Latvia out of political necessity.
Jury Prize: Valeska Grisebach's 'The Dreamed Adventure,' a documentary-influenced crime drama set in Bulgaria.
Best Director (tie): Los Javis ('La Bola Negra’) and Pawel Pawlikowski ('Fatherland') split the Best Director prize. The jury couldn't separate them. Pawlikowski got a laugh out of the awkward moment of three directors (Los Javis are a duo) sharing the stage, then used his speech to make a case for art resisting "noise, algorithms, peer pressure."
Best Actor (tie): Emmanuel Macchia and Valentin Campagne for 'Coward.' Campagne literally leaped into his co-star's arms at the podium.
Best Actress (tie): Virginie Efira and Tao Okamoto for 'All of a Sudden.'
Best Screenplay: Emmanuel Marre for 'A Man of His Time.'
Three of the seven major categories ended in ties. Jury member Chloé Zhao said they fell in love with the tenderness in the relationships on screen and couldn't separate the winners.
The two American films in competition, 'Paper Tiger' and 'The Man I Love,' left without anything. Gray has now competed at Cannes six times without a win. Both should land on the fall circuit regardless.
Meanwhile, the market closed with some late action…
Netflix landed both 'La Bola Negra' (reported $4M–$5M, the film that drew a 20-minute standing ovation) and 'Gentle Monster' with Léa Seydoux for key English-language territories. Two clear Oscar plays.
MUBI took 'Coward' for North America. Lukas Dhont's WWI queer romance divided critics but united the jury enough to give its leads a shared Best Actor prize.
'The Midnight Library' (deal pending). Florence Pugh starrer directed by Garth Davis, based on Matt Haig's novel. Paramount, Focus, and Sony are all circling a ~$70M film. Expected to be the market's biggest deal when it closes, likely north of $30M domestic.
Sony Pictures Classics picked up 'Rehearsals for a Revolution,' Iranian director Pegah Ahangarani's documentary and L'Oeil d'Or winner, for North and Latin America and several other territories.
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WIDESHOT
🎬 Summer box office, Pope Leo XIV, and Canada…
Spielberg and Nolan are both releasing films this summer (Getty Images)
🍿 Summer 2026 is shaping up to be a big one for theaters. After years of industry turbulence, analysts are projecting a domestic summer haul of $4.1B–4.3B, the strongest since 2019. Much of that comes down to an unusually strong lineup: Steven Spielberg's 'Disclosure Day,' Christopher Nolan's 'The Odyssey,' and franchise entries from 'Toy Story' and 'Spider-Man' fill out a calendar that 'The Mandalorian and Grogu' kicked off this weekend. The last pre-pandemic summer (2019) brought in around $4B, a number only Barbenheimer managed to match in the years since. The only caveat is that actual attendance is still down, meaning higher ticket prices are doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Still, the mood in Hollywood right now is cautiously optimistic.
🤖 The AI debate has officially reached the Vatican. Pope Leo XIV released his first encyclical (a formal papal letter), 'Magnifica Humanitas,' taking broad aim at generative AI. He's warning against what he calls "Babel syndrome," the idea that profit-driven systems reducing humanity to data and performance is, in Vatican terms, very bad actually. He says AI needs to be "disarmed." The letter calls for government regulation, worker protections, and retraining programs, and Leo co-presented it alongside Anthropic co-founder Christopher Olah. The letter isn't film and TV-specific, but Leo has been a vocal industry supporter, who has publicly praised the full range of below-the-line crew by name.
🍁 American streamers just got hit with a costly new bill in Canada. The country's broadcast regulator ordered American platforms like Netflix, Prime Video, and Disney+ to contribute 15% of their Canadian revenues to local indie production, tripling the original obligation under Canada's Online Streaming Act. The Motion Picture Association called it discriminatory and a USMCA trade violation, and a coalition of streamers is now lobbying Congress for retaliatory tariffs on Canadian exports. The studios' gripe is simple: they're already the top foreign investors in Canadian film and TV, and now they're being forced to subsidize local competitors in a market the industry relies on for cheaper shoots and generous tax credits.
LAST LOOKS
Film Development 🗒️
Doug Liman’s AI-powered satire ‘Bitcoin’ will feature fictionalized versions of Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Vladimir Putin and Eric Trump. (more)
Sony landed 'Holiday Inn,' a four-quadrant family feature pitch from writers Ben Zazove and Evan Turner. (more)
Netflix picked up U.S. rights to 'Sacrifice,' Romain Gavras' star-studded satire with Chris Evans and Anya Taylor-Joy. (more)
Nicolas Winding Refn is reviving 'Maniac Cop' as a feature reboot backed by Mubi and Goodfellas, with a January shoot date. (more)
Julia Roberts is set to star in and produce 'Home Economics,' Sony's adaptation of Katy Hays' novel. (more)
TV Development 📺
Tom Hardy is reportedly heading out the door on 'MobLand' after S2, allegedly due to behind-the-scenes tensions on the Paramount+ drama. (more)
Naomie Harris and Christina Hendricks have started filming BBC legal drama ‘Reputation,’ centered on a high-profile celebrity libel battle. (more)
‘Celebrity Wheel of Fortune’ will debut 10 streaming-exclusive episodes on Disney+ and Hulu hosted by Ryan Seacrest and Vanna White. (more)
Ben Stiller is teaming with Mike Judge for 'Protective Custody,' an Apple comedy series about a disgraced financier navigating life in prison. (more)
‘The Late Show With Stephen Colbert’ drew 6.74M viewers for its finale, becoming the show’s most-watched weeknight episode ever. (more)
Business 🤝
Paramount hired Jeffrey Kessler (fresh off his landmark Live Nation antitrust win) to lead the defense of its $110B Warner Bros. merger. (more)
INTERMISSION: A MESSAGE FROM OUR SPONSOR
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VIDEO VILLAGE
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That’s a wrap for today. Since we're landing in your inbox on Tuesday this week, we'll see you Friday. Back to normal programming next week.
-The Dailies Team
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