Hollywood spent the weekend spending $200 million on rebrands and reboots, and the breakout story is a $1 million horror movie made by a guy whose day job was filming sketches in his apartment. We are absolutely seated for this one.

Curry Barker, who built his audience making short horror clips on TikTok and YouTube, walked into theaters this weekend with Obsession, a Blumhouse pickup acquired by Focus Features for a reported $14 million after it was made for around $1 million. It opened to $16 million in third place and is currently the best-reviewed wide release of 2026.

Let's recap. A YouTuber, working on the budget of a single Marvel re-shoot lunch order, just delivered the best-reviewed wide release of the year, beat his budget back roughly sixteen times over in three days, and got both critics and audiences to agree on something. The film is a twisted little Faustian-bargain love story, and from everything we're hearing, it actually has a story, characters, and a point of view. Imagine that.

This is the kind of scrappy, original, low-budget filmmaking we appreciate. No IP. No legacy sequel-titis. No 14-name writers' room. Just a guy with an idea, a script, and the audacity to make something that didn't need a focus group. Go see it and let us know how it goes.

In what has to be the most "no really, the audience decides what wins" plot twist of the year, Michael climbed back to first place in its fourth weekend with $26.1 million, kicking The Devil Wears Prada 2 off the throne after two weeks at the top. Michael has now crossed $700 million worldwide and is the fourth highest-grossing biopic of all time. Whatever you think of the King of Pop's complicated legacy, audiences clearly want to see Jaafar Jackson channel his uncle on the big screen.

Meanwhile, The Devil Wears Prada 2 slid to second with $18 million (down 58%), which is a steep drop but still leaves it sitting pretty as a Disney win.

The rest of the box office was a grab bag of legacy plays. Paramount's Top Gun 40th anniversary re-release (paired with Maverick in IMAX and Dolby) pulled a healthy $3.1 million for fourth, proving once again that Tom Cruise is bulletproof and that audiences will happily pay to see a real movie made by real people doing real stunts. The Goose and Maverick helmet popcorn buckets reportedly outsold half the actual new releases this weekend. We are not exaggerating.

Guy Ritchie's In the Grey with Henry Cavill and Jake Gyllenhaal stumbled into fifth with $3 million, Ritchie's worst opening in nearly two decades. Stings, but at least it gave us the trailer with Cavill in a suit holding a gun, which we will gladly take.

The biggest story of next weekend is, of course, the long-awaited arrival of The Mandalorian and Grogu on Friday, May 22. This is the first theatrical Star Wars movie since 2019's The Rise of Skywalker (we don't talk about that one) and the first one without Kathleen Kennedy running things into the ground. Dave Filoni is officially in the captain's chair as President and Chief Creative Officer of Lucasfilm, with Jon Favreau directing, Pedro Pascal under the helmet, Sigourney Weaver and Jeremy Allen White in support, and the entire thing shot in IMAX.

Deadline's tracking has been hovering around $80 million for the opening, but we've seen mixed signals on pre-sales. Industry insiders are nervous because, after 14 years of Kennedy-era output, Star Wars trust is somewhere between "Crystal Pepsi" and "Quibi" on the consumer confidence index. Anectdotally, we are not hearing good things, with some even saying it’s Favreau’s worst work to date. I guess we’ll know for certain in a few days time.

The summer just keeps coming. Bring Her Back, the Philippou brothers' A24 nightmare follow-up to Talk to Me, opens May 30. Then in June: Spielberg's Disclosure Day with Emily Blunt and Josh Brolin (June 12), Toy Story 5 (June 19), and Supergirl with Milly Alcock (June 26). Cinelytic is still projecting a $4.5 billion domestic summer, which would be the biggest since 2016. About time the theaters got their groove back.

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