Steven Spielberg's New Sci-Fi Blockbuster Beats Expectations, Audiences Still Obsessed With 'Obsession' – MovieWeb

Home Latest News Steven Spielberg's New Sci-Fi Blockbuster Beats Expectations, Audiences Still Obsessed With 'Obsession' – MovieWeb
Steven Spielberg's New Sci-Fi Blockbuster Beats Expectations, Audiences Still Obsessed With 'Obsession' – MovieWeb

Disclosure Day is the latest blockbuster from Steven Spielberg, the man behind classics like Jaws, E.T., Raiders of the Lost Ark, Jurassic Park, and more. His latest movie revisits a favorite topic of his: extraterrestrials. It easily earned the top spot on the box office charts this past weekend, taking in $44 million domestically and $92.9 million worldwide, per Deadline.
That’s above expectations, which originally had the movie earning just $35 million domestically on its opening weekend. Disclosure Day still has a ways to go if it wants to be profitable — generally, movies have to make around two to 2.5 times their budget to justify the cost, and Disclosure Day cost a respectable $115 million — but it’s possible. The last big-budget Spielberg sci-fi spectacle to hit theaters was 2018’s Ready Player One, which earned $41 million domestically on its opening weekend and ended up with a worldwide haul of $607 million.
There are a few red flags to note. For instance, 60% of people who saw Disclosure Day this past weekend were 35 or older, indicating that younger audiences aren’t particularly interested in buying what Spielberg is selling. Masters of the Universe, which suffered a 70% drop in attendance in its second weekend, had a similar problem. It’s unlikely the He-Man adaptation will see a surge in ticket sales going forward, which is a big issue, because the movie cost almost $200 million to make and has only taken in $84 million worldwide thus far. Masters of the Universe looks destined to become one of the year’s biggest bombs.
Scary Movie also suffered a 70% drop in attendance in its sophomore outing, but it opened a lot stronger than Masters of the Universe and cost a lot less to make. At the moment, Scary Movie has made over $173 million at the worldwide box office against a budget of just $30 million, so it doesn’t have anything to worry about.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is somewhere in between. The new Star Wars movie cost some $165 million to make and has earned around $315 million at the worldwide box office. That’s not terrible, but it may not be enough to convince Disney to make a sequel, let alone produce a fourth season of The Mandalorian TV series.
Next to Disclosure Day, the biggest earner of the weekend was Obsession, which is remarkable because the horror movie has been in theaters for over a month now and cost less than $1 million to make. With a haul of $265 million worldwide, it’s a bona fide phenomenon. Backrooms, another comparatively low-budget horror movie helmed by a 20-something director who got his start on YouTube, is also performing very well. It’s been in theaters for three weeks and has already made $262 million worldwide against a budget of just $10 million. Look for Hollywood studios to try to chase the success of these movies for years to come.
Take a look at the full box office chart for the weekend of Jun. 12-14 below:
Movie
Box Office
(Domestic)
Box Office
(Worldwide)
Weeks in
Theaters
1
Disclosure Day
$44 million
$92.9 million
new
2
Obsession
$188.3 million
$265 million
5
3
Scary Movie
$84.5 million
$173.1 million
2
4
Backrooms
$160 million
$262 million
3
5
Masters of the Universe
$45.7 million
$84 million
2
6
Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu
$165 million
$315 million
4
7
Michael
$362.7 million
$932.2 million
8
8
BTS World Tour Arirang: Live Viewing
$6.2 million
$9.4 million
new
9
The Furious
$2.7 million
N/A
new
10
Stop! That! Train!
$2 million
N/A
new
Michael, which is now officially the highest-grossing musical biopic of all time, took seventh place on the charts this past weekend, bringing its haul to $932.2 million. It could well follow the lead of The Super Mario Galaxy Movie and become the second film of 2026 to earn over a billion dollars. After that, we have BTS World Tour ‘ARIRANG,’ a live broadcast of the band’s homecoming show at the Busan Asiad Main Stadium in South Korea. It was in theaters on Saturday and brought in $9.4 million worldwide. Finally, the brutal martial arts thriller The Furious came in ninth place, and the disaster comedy/drag show Stop! That! Train! took tenth.
Overall, the movie theater business is in a good place. The domestic box office is 13% ahead of where it was at this point last year and just 3.4% behind where it was in 2019, the last year before the pandemic descended on the world and people got used to life without movie theaters. And there are several huge movies coming out in the near future that promsie to keep things rolling, including Toy Story 5 (June 19), the Despicable Me spin-off Minions & Monsters (July 1), Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey (July 17), and Spider-Man: Brand New Day (July 31).

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