Old School. Biblically Independent.
By Kayleigh Donaldson | Film | June 1, 2026
Let me set the scene for you. It’s the beginning of May 2026. Box office experts were reporting that Backrooms, the newest horror film from A24 and the debut of 20-year-old Kane Parsons, could surpass expectations and gross around $20 million in its opening weekend. That’s double its budget so it’d instantly be a hit. By the week of its release, those projections had increased to a startling $40 to 50 million. Cut to this weekend. Backrooms is a hit. How big? It took over a Star Wars movie and earned $81,456,295. This, like the backrooms themselves, is huge.
I truly don’t think A24 knew what they had on their hands here. The adaptation of a web-series that was based on a creepypasta from 4chan is one of the biggest films of the year so far. It’s far and away the biggest opening in A24 history, and it’s already their fifth highest-grossing film ever. Marty Supreme, which holds the number one spot on that list, made it to $191.3 million. I think Backrooms can surpass that in a couple of weeks.
Also doing incredibly well is Curry Barker’s Obsession, another horror film made by a guy who got his start on YouTube. This is a rare movie that’s seen its grosses increase on a week-by-week basis. In its third week of release, it kept the number two spot with $26.4 million, which is 10% more than the previous week. Word of mouth has been phenomenal. Worldwide, it’s taken in about $148 million so far, from a budget of around $750,000 to $1 million. And this is why Barker’s getting to remake The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
It wasn’t a great weekend for Star Wars. The Mandalorian and Grogu stumbled from first place to third, earning only $25 million. That’s a 69% drop from opening weekend, where it already had the lowest-grossing opening of any film in the franchise in the Disney era. Whatever you think of any of the aforementioned films, surely it’s a good thing that young audiences are embracing new talent and fresh ideas that don’t cost the earth to make? I’d hope that Hollywood learns the right lessons from this but I’m sure they won’t.
Nate Bargatze is hoping to become a movie-star but his leading man vehicle, The Breadwinner, didn’t get off to a great start. It landed at number five with only $7.5 million. But that is better than Pressure, a film about war and weather that will surely become every dad’s favourite thing once they discover it exists. That only only took in $5.75 million from 1,829 locations.
In limited release news: Power Ballad, a musical comedy starring Nick Jonas and Paul Rudd, earned $170,000 from ten places; the documentary Time and Water grossed $8,625 from one theatre; and The Currents, a psychological drama from Argentina, made $8,509.
This coming week sees the release of the reboot-sequel Scary Movie and the nostalgic remake Masters of the Unniverse.
You can check out the rest of the weekend box office numbers here.
