May is where the summer "officially" begins by the industry's definition and runs through to Labor Day in September. We're coming out of a decent April headlined by Mario, with supporting help from March holdover Project Hail Mary and flanked by the hopeful over-performance of Michael. May brings us a legacy sequel with genuine breakout potential, a video-game action property moving up from October, a Memorial Day Star Wars picture carrying real question marks, some animated sheep, and an A24 horror swing on the month's final frame. This is a healthier May than 2024's $550M disaster, but it's going to need The Devil Wears Prada 2 and The Mandalorian & Grogu to both show up to get anywhere near 2025's $967M. Thankfully, we're starting May with a healthy lead thanks to a good first quarter.
Four years of context worth keeping in mind as you read the rest of this: May 2019 is the benchmark ($1.08B, Endgame's runoff), 2022 and 2023 landed in the $774–786M range on the strength of a single $310M+ anchor, 2024 collapsed to $550M because nothing popped, and 2025 bounced back hard to $967M on the Lilo & Stitch / Mission: Impossible Memorial Day double-header. Our long-range model currently has May 2026 landing around $780–860M — stronger than 2024, weaker than 2025, and in roughly the same tier as 2022/2023.
Spillover · Late AprilWhat April is handing off to May
Most of the April slate will be mostly spent by the time Prada 2 opens, but there's one title worth flagging as a real May contributor. Lionsgate's Michael, Antoine Fuqua's Michael Jackson biopic starring Jaafar Jackson, opens on April 24 just one week before Prada takes over. Michael gets an uncontested first weekend but The Devil Wears Prada 2 does represent significant competition for similar audiences, so Michael is going to need good word of mouth to keep it going strong after the first week. If Michael opens in the $30–45M range on April 24, it'll gross $50M+ of its domestic total in May across weekends 2 through 5. Of course, it could go much higher than that. Comps include Bohemian Rhapsody ($51M opening, $216M domestic) and Elvis ($31M / $151M), which is probably the more realistic goal here.
Mario Galaxy could continue to add another $25–40M in May (on its way to $450M), but everything else from April will be mostly out of the top 10 by May 8 and shouldn't move the monthly total much.
Weekend 1 · May 1–3Prada kicks off summer
The summer season opens with Fox/20th Century Studios' long-awaited The Devil Wears Prada 2, which is the single most important title for the month's final math. Tracking has the Anne Hathaway / Meryl Streep / Emily Blunt reunion ranging anywhere from $55M to $95M depending on who you listen to, with Deadline probably lowballing at $60M. Presales (reportedly double Wuthering Heights) are suggesting something closer to $90M, with the potential to hit $100M+ if everything goes right.
For reference, the original opened to $27.5M in June 2006 and legged out to $124.7M domestic on a 4.5x multiplier. A sequel 20 years later with the entire original cast back, arriving at a four-quadrant-starved moment, should dwarf both the opening and total figures of the original. The real question is whether it lands closer to the Wicked tier ($112.5M opening and strong repeat business) or the Sex and the City tier (strong open at $57M, quick burn). One huge advantage this one has: Mother's Day falls on weekend 2 which should cushion the sophomore drop significantly. A 3.0–3.5x multiplier (heavily word-of-mouth dependent) off a $75M opening puts the final domestic run in the $220–290M range. That's a real hit on a reported $100M-ish budget.
Counter-programming: Angel Studios has Animal Farm, Andy Serkis's long-gestating animated adaptation of the Orwell novella with a voice cast that includes Seth Rogen, Glenn Close, and Kieran Culkin. A sub-$10M opening feels likely. Neon's Hokum and Sony's That Time I Got Reincarnated as a Slime the Movie round out the frame as narrow-appeal plays ($2–6M range each).
Weekend 2 · May 8–10Mortal Kombat II tests its might
Warner Bros. moves Mortal Kombat II into its new May 8 date after multiple shifts (originally October 2025, then May 15). The 2021 original opened to $22.5M in the middle of the pandemic with a day-and-date HBO Max release and finished at $42.3M domestic on a 1.9x multiplier, extremely front-loaded as many day-and-date releases were. This one is theatrical-exclusive, has Karl Urban's Johnny Cage to draw back the fanbase, and arrived with a well-received first trailer. Tracking is all over the map: from merely matching the previous film to breaking out with a $40M+ opening.
Video game adaptations are always hit-or-miss, but R-rated action properties have been soft lately. This one may live or die based on reviews, and we'd give a conservative range of $20–40M opening with average legs and no chance at hitting $100M total, but we'd happily be proven wrong and see this breakout. Dungeons and Dragons could be a good comp: that film opened to $37M and finaled at $93M. At this point, that would feel like a success story here (but maybe we're being too pessimistic).
The other title opening that weekend is Amazon MGM's The Sheep Detectives, opening alongside Mortal Kombat. A family-friendly animated comedy in a slot with no other kids movies, it should over-perform its modest expectations, since giving it this slot suggests Amazon feels they have a crowd pleaser on their hands. A $10–20M opening is a reasonable expectation (anything over $20M would be a breakout for this one), and if the kid-audience glove fits, it could hold strong in weekend two (a quiet weekend) and bounce back over Memorial Day headed to a total of $50M+, pushing towards $70M if it opens on the higher end and word of mouth materializes.
Weekend 3 · May 15–17A quiet breather frame
This is the traditionally softest frame of the May corridor, and the 2026 slate reflects that. Three mid-budget wides open: Black Bear's In the Grey (Guy Ritchie, Henry Cavill, Jake Gyllenhaal), Amazon MGM's Is God Is, and Focus Features' Obsession. None have tracking that registers above single digits at this stage. In the Grey is probably the most viable of the three given the Ritchie action crowd, but nothing here looks like a breakout.
The real story that weekend is the second-week holds on MKII (likely 60%+ drop if the opening skews front-loaded) and the third-week hold on Prada 2, and a chance for word of mouth to show up for The Sheep Detectives. Paramount is also rolling out Top Gun and Top Gun: Maverick re-releases on May 13 as a mid-week IMAX-focused play, which might contribute a little extra coin, but nothing too significant.
Weekend 4 · May 22–25Memorial Day — the Mandalorian arrives
Disney's The Mandalorian & Grogu is the biggest variable of the entire month. The first theatrical Star Wars film since Rise of Skywalker (2019), it arrives riding a four-day Memorial Day holiday with no major competition opening two weeks on either side — exactly the setup that Lilo & Stitch rode to a $183M 4-day debut in 2025.
But the tracking is not great. Current industry forecasts peg the 3-day at $71–85M, which would be the lowest opening for a Disney-era Star Wars theatrical, below Solo's $84.8M 3-day ($103M 4-day) in 2018. The concern is legitimate: Star Wars has been streaming-first for six years, The Mandalorian's audience is a subset of the broader Star Wars audience, and Grogu alone may not be enough of a four-quadrant hook. The real question is if Star Wars has lost the casual moviegoers that made it an all-audiences event and has regressed to more of a niche/fan play (albeit a large niche), after some underwhelming movies in the late 2010's.
The upside case is that Star Wars, plus a four-day holiday, plus no competition the weekend before can easily recover 15–25% over the base tracking, pushing the 4-day into the $110–130M range. That's still a real number, just not a Lilo & Stitch number. Final domestic should track similarly to Solo's $213.8M, anywhere from $170M on the low end to $240M if it has real legs, with $200M feeling like the most likely landing zone. Of course, the movie could also crater from its tracking and if that happens, $120M-ish probably becomes the low end. At this point, we think that scenario is still unlikely.
Also opening that weekend: Paramount's horror Passenger (André Øvredal, of Trollhunter and The Autopsy of Jane Doe) and Neon's I Love Boosters. Passenger is the more commercially viable of the two: a van-life demonic-stalker premise with a strong genre filmmaker attached, but releasing a hard-R horror against Star Wars on Memorial Day is a tough ask. Expect $8–12M opening and a $25M final domestic run — unless we see some real traction in the lead-up to release.
Weekend 5 · May 29–31A24 closes the month with Backrooms
The month ends with Backrooms, A24's live-action adaptation of Kane Parsons' viral YouTube horror series, directed by Parsons himself with Chiwetel Ejiofor, Renate Reinsve, and Mark Duplass. The source material has a deeply online built-in audience, the budget is a slim $10M, and A24's horror track record (Hereditary, Talk to Me, Heretic, Longlegs) is genuinely the best in the business for non-franchise horror plays.
The Longlegs comp ($22.4M opening, $74M domestic) is the ceiling case. A more conservative read lands somewhere in the Heretic / Talk to Me range ($11–14M opening). The Mandalorian's second-week grip on premium screens is the headwind, and the other new openers: Sony's The Breadwinner, Focus's Pressure, Bleecker Street's Stop! That! Train are narrow-audience plays that shouldn't factor into the top 3. Final domestic projection for Backrooms: $35–55M, with the ceiling depending on word-of-mouth from the built-in Parsons fanbase translating to general audiences.
The Month · OutlookWhat May 2026 adds up to
Add it up: the month tracks toward $800M. That's a respectable summer kickoff, but it's contingent on all four tentpoles hitting at or above their base cases. If Prada 2 legs out to Wicked-tier and Mandalorian recovers to the $100M+ 4-day, we're looking at closer to $900M, which would be the second-best May of the post-pandemic era. If Mandalorian actually opens below $70M and Prada 2 is more front-loaded than expected, the month slides to $700M and we're having a different conversation. Prada 2 is the leading indicator. If it opens to $80M+, we're in a healthy May. If it opens to $50M, we're in trouble.
Weekend-by-weekend, here's the quick summary of predicted weekend totals across all films: