Industry News
by saidiontheside

saidi’s take – 6/8/2026

Hello everyone,

BOX OFFICE: Two new movies took over the top of the box office this week.  “Scary Movie” had a franchise best opening with $54.3 million.  The reboot of “Masters of the Universe” was 2nd with $29 million (about half what “Scary Movie” made).  “Backrooms” slipped 68% on its second weekend making $26.2 million.  For the first time since it opened, the “Obsession” box office WENT DOWN this past weekend but only by 7%.  It still made more money that it did on its opening weekend.  The news was saying the last movie to make MORE money after its opening weekend was “E.T. the Extra Terrestrial” 45 years ago.

Overall domestic box office gross was $182.1 million which was just slightly higher than the total domestic box office last weekend (0.3% higher)

WORLDWIDE BOX OFFICE: “Scary Movie” made about as much internationally as it did domestically for a worldwide total of $105 million.  “Masters of the Universe” made less internationally than it did domestically making a worldwide total of just $54 million.  “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” is now the first movie of 2026 to make over $1 BILLION.  “Backrooms” has a worldwide gross of $212 million which is the biggest grossing movie released by A24 ever.  “Michael” has a worldwide gross of $890 million which is the biggest grossing movie released by Lionsgate ever. (even bigger than the Hunger Games movies). 

OTHER NEWS:

  • They started selling advance tickets for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming “The Odyssey” last week and it was so big it crashed some websites.  AMC had a 2 hour wait to purchase tickets on its website for a couple hours.  When the tickets sales calmed down, the movie is now sold out for almost all its IMAX and 70mm showing across the country.  AMC said it was the best advance tickets day since 2022.
  • 2 movie theaters have now reopened.  The former IPic movie theaters in Westwood Village near UCLA and in New York’s Seaport District. Blue Fox Entertainment now owns both multiplexes and plans to keep them open as they remodel the buildings into their new name “The Cinemas”. One of the things they’ll be changing is to remove the in-theater dining.

LITTLE BIT OF HUMOR:  “Last Week Tonight” las week covered the former movie posters from Ghana.  Back in the late 80s when the only way to watch movies in that country was on VHS tape and a small TV set, they would paint their movie posters.  Sometimes WITHOUT EVEN WATCHING THE MOVIE.

The movie posters would often be violent and sometimes have explosions and snakes – even if they weren’t in the movie.  For example, the poster for the movie “Ghost” shown on the left in the frame above has Patrick Swayze watch Whoopi Goldbergs head and claws come through the body of a screaming Demi Moore.  Often this would lead to people “demanding their money back because they’ve been deceived”.  If you have HBO Max, they talk about the movie posters at the very end of the May 31 episode.  If you don’t have HBO MAX. there’s also a brief history of the Ghana movie posters on the Instagram post at this link.

Today, Ghana doesn’t create their own movie posters anymore but the artists of the old movie posters have started painting them again as art pieces.  The website https://deadlypreygallery.com/ sells movie posters that the artists created.  They’re selling a special poster for the “Last Week Tonight” TV show after the show talked about their posters.