Three years ago Warner Bros. wrote Coyote vs. Acme off its books and put it in a vault. On Friday, another studio opens it in theaters on a 95% Tomatometer, hopefully getting it to a double-digit opening. Meanwhile, 20th Century/Disney opens The Dog Stars also hoping for a $10M+ start, while Spider-Man: Brand New Day goes for a fifth straight weekend at #1 on its march to $900M.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
Brand New Day passed Avengers: Endgame on Tuesday and sits second on the all-time domestic list at $866,496,542. The weekend drops have improved every frame, from -60% to -51% to -45%, and this week’s weekdays came in around -50% against the same days last week. Force Awakens went -37.8% into its fifth weekend and Endgame -42.6%. Expect a drop in the 40s again this weekend, which would get it to around $890M+. That puts it less than $50M away from taking the all-time domestic record from The Force Awakens.
Looking at the worldwide numbers, Titanic’s $2,257,906,828 and Ne Zha 2’s $2,260,176,370 will both go down by Sunday, making this one the fourth-biggest release in history, only behind Endgame and two Avatar movies. By the end of its run, it’ll be situated at the #3 spot worldwide while it sits atop the domestic podium.
Coyote vs. Acme
Less than a month ago, Coyote vs. Acme was tracking in the single digits. Over the past week or so, strong reviews and slowly building buzz have helped it break out from there, now looking very likely for a mid teens opening weekend, most likely $12–15M but with a shot to break above that mark.
The case for it is not complicated. It is certified fresh at 95% on 137 reviews and is a known brand, albeit an older one. The question is if kids can get excited for this OR if parents can based off of nostalgia and bring them along. People have been demanding Warner Bros. release the film for a few years now after they shelved it, so the hope for Ketchup Entertainment is that now it’s releasing, they actually show up.
Warner Bros. Discovery took a $30 million write-down on a finished $70 million production in November 2023. Ketchup bought global rights for $50 million in March 2025 and recouped under $20 million selling foreign. Its biggest opening to date is The Day the Earth Blew Up at $3.2 million, so a $15 million weekend here is about five times the biggest the company has ever had. If it breaks double digits, that’s good enough considering the circumstances and earlier tracking that we can call this a success.
The Dog Stars
20th Century/Disney put The Dog Stars here as a late summer adult option, and it arrives on 3,300 theaters carrying a net $70 million production cost. It also arrives at 40% on 111 reviews. It has some heavyweight names attached, directed by Ridley Scott and starring Jacob Elordi, but it’s always hard to get adult audiences out to the theater when reviews come in soft like they have here.
One comp is The Amateur, which opened to $14.8 million and legged 2.8x to $40.8 million domestic and $96 million worldwide on a $60 million budget, with better reviews and a spring release. Ridley Scott’s directed openings run from Gladiator II’s $55.5M and The Martian’s $54.3M, Napoleon’s $32.8M and as low as The Last Duel’s $4.8M, and you can expect this one to open on the low end. Again, the hope here would be for double digits, but that doesn’t seem like a sure thing here.
Insidious: Out of the Further
This series drops hard in week two every single time: -58.0% for The Last Key, -60.6% for The Red Door, -65.7% for Chapter 2 and -67.8% for Chapter 3. Out of the Further is going to the steep end of it. Expect a drop of around -60% to -65% for $9–10M. That gets it to $43M or so and will safely clear $50M when all is said and done.
Off an $18 million budget, this is already profitable before we even count the international portion of the gross, though that should contribute enough to get this over $100M worldwide. To Sony, that’s a nice little side result while it continues to shovel in all the Spider-Man cash. To be clear: they need hits like this. Sony has had a very light year besides Spidey, and needs to build out the depth of its roster so it’s not so all-or-nothing.
The Odyssey
The Odyssey keeps posting the shallowest declines on the board. Its weekend drops read -27%, -43%, -38%, -26% and -17%, its weekdays this week fell mostly in the -20s against the same days last week, the smallest on the chart. Seven weeks in, an R-rated Nolan epic is still pulling an audience and still packing out IMAX. Expect a drop of maybe -25% and $14–15M.
Its sixth weekend at $19.7M was the ninth-biggest sixth weekend ever, and anything over $13M this time keeps it in the top 10 all-time for its seventh weekend. It should be at around $565M by Sunday and we’re still seeing a finish over $600M here. Worldwide refuses to slow down and this weekend it gets past $1.5B, overtaking Avatar: Fire and Ash, Furious 7 and The Avengers, getting it to #14 of all-time.
The End of Oak Street
The End of Oak Street and PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie opened the same day within $756,000 of each other, $21,010,488 against $20,254,688, which makes them the cleanest same-week pair on the 2026 chart. Two weeks on, Oak Street leads $40.5 million to $37.8 million, although it’s falling faster, which is to be expected. A -45% third weekend gives $4.5–5.5M and a $50 million domestic total. It should end its run between $55–60M domestic and maybe $120M worldwide, which is decent, but not enough to justify the $85M budget.
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie
PAW Patrol has Coyote vs. Acme landing and is competing for the same kid/family audience, so expect a slide of around 50% for a $4–5M weekend. A $60M domestic finish seems likely still, with worldwide likely landing a little under $150M, a good result off a $40M budget and likely millions of toys sold.
Down the chart. Three more wide releases open Friday and all three will end up in the single digits. Finding Emily comes in from Focus Features with a 93% from critics, so we’ll see if that translates to some traffic at theaters this weekend. Roadside Attractions takes Buddy to 1,500 sites, Casper Kelly’s R-rated killer-unicorn satire with Cristin Milioti and Topher Grace, at 85% on 65 reviews. IFC has Idiots from Macon Blair with Dave Franco.
Meanwhile, Mutiny comes off a $7.7 million opening and should land near $3.5–4.5M for roughly $14 million through ten days against a $40 million budget. Spa Weekend takes $1.5–2M. Tony expanded well last week to 1,642 theaters and took $5,011,611 last weekend for $6,651,838 in three weeks, and could see another small expansion and/or small drop this weekend.
Looking ahead. September opens thin. Fall 2: Deadpoint arrives Sept 2 at $4–6M and Paramount’s By Any Means on Sept 4 at $7–10M, both into a Labor Day corridor running Sept 4–7, which makes this the last unassisted frame of the summer. Practical Magic 2 on Sept 11 at $35–45M will finally be the film to take the top spot from Brand New Day after six weeks on top.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day took a fifth straight weekend at #1 with $22.5 million, but the weekend belonged to a film Warner Bros. finished, wrote down and put in a vault. Coyote vs. Acme opened to $15.9 million for Ketchup Entertainment, five times the biggest opening the company had ever had. Behind them, The Odyssey posted the shallowest hold on the board again and The Dog Stars fell apart on Saturday.
Spider-Man: Brand New Day
We called $20 to $24 million and it landed at $22,513,101, dead centre. More useful than the number is the pattern it continued: the weekend drops have now gone -60%, -51%, -45%, -42%, improving every single frame since the biggest opening in history. Films do not usually get better at holding five weekends deep. This one has, every time.
It passed Avengers: Endgame during the week to take second on the all-time domestic list and finished the weekend at $891,821,029. Worldwide we said in the preview that Titanic and Ne Zha 2 would both go down by Sunday and leave it fourth of all time. It went one better and took Avatar: The Way of Water too, so it is third, behind only Avatar and Endgame.
Saturday was the tell on how much gas is left: $10,011,097 against a $5,539,426 Friday, an 81% jump. That is a healthy weekend shape, and it is why $900 million was never in question. The only real question left is The Force Awakens’ $936,662,225.
Coyote vs. Acme
This is the one worth sitting with. A finished $70 million Looney Tunes movie that Warner Bros. Discovery shelved and took a $30 million write-down on in November 2023, that its own director and cast publicly campaigned to save, that got bought by a distributor whose biggest opening in its entire history was The Day the Earth Blew Up at $3.2 million, opened to $15,914,007 on 95% and an A CinemaScore. We said above $15 million made it the biggest indie-distributor story of the year, and it cleared that with room.
The daily shape is the interesting part. Its Friday-to-Saturday bump was only +9.6%, the smallest of any wide release on the board and well under what a PG family title normally does, which says the Thursday and Friday crowd was the built-in audience that had been waiting three years. But the Sunday hold was -17.3%, the shallowest in the top ten, and that is the number that matters for where this finishes. Front-loaded openings do not hold Sunday like that.
Our model has it at $56.1 million to $64.1 million on 3.88x legs. That is a $60 million domestic run for a film that was written off as a tax asset, and Ketchup paid roughly $50 million for global rights on it.
The Odyssey
$14,353,795 and a -27% seventh weekend, right in the middle of the $13 to $15 million we called. It has now done -27%, -43%, -38%, -26%, -17%, -27% across six holds, which for a three-hour R-rated epic in its seventh frame is absurd. Universal has kept it on 2,617 screens and the Imax 70mm run is doing the heavy lifting.
It crossed $563.9 million on the weekend, already Nolan’s biggest by a distance and Universal’s second biggest ever at $1.55 billion worldwide. The Super Mario Bros. Movie and 18th all-time domestic was the next marker and it was never in doubt at this rate.
Insidious: Out of the Further
$10,204,695 and a -59% second weekend, slightly above the $8 to $10 million we called and a shade shallower than the -62% to -68% band the franchise usually posts. A C+ CinemaScore was always going to cost it a long run, and -59% is the steep end of normal for this series. Off an $18 million budget it was already profitable before this weekend started, and $50 million domestic is comfortably in reach.
The Dog Stars
$7,709,729 is below our $9 to $12 million call and below the floor of every published range, including Boxoffice Pro’s $8 to $12 million. We were already under Deadline on this one and it still came in short.
The number that tells you the rest is Saturday. It did $2,986,729 on Friday and $2,796,186 on Saturday, a 6.4% drop on the day a wide release is supposed to post its biggest gross. Only one other wide title on the board went down Friday to Saturday. Previews are counted separately in our data, so that Friday is clean and the fall is real word of mouth arriving, which the C+ CinemaScore then confirmed on Sunday.
We said in the preview that Sunday’s CinemaScore decided whether this was a $25 million film or a $32 million one. It turned out to be neither. Our model has it at $16.8 million to $24.8 million and the low end looks right, which against a $110 million negative cost is a bad one for Ridley Scott and 20th Century. His openings have run from Gladiator II’s $55.5 million down to The Last Duel’s $4.8 million, and this sits nearer the bottom of that range than anyone expected.
Buddy
Nobody had a published range on this and it opened to $5,531,024 on 1,277 screens, which is the biggest Roadside Attractions opening since Covid and the second biggest in the company’s history behind I Can Only Imagine. From the producers of Weapons, with an 88% Tomatometer and a 78% audience score, it also posted a -16.7% Sunday, the best hold of anything in the top ten. A $4,331 per-screen average on a title with no stars is the kind of result that gets a specialty distributor a bigger swing next time.
PAW Patrol: The Dino Movie
$5,016,050 and a -45% third weekend, just above the $4 to $5 million we called and a good result with Coyote vs. Acme aiming directly at the same families. It also posted the biggest Saturday jump on the board at +94.9%, which is what week three of a kids' movie looks like once school is back: Friday is dead and the whole weekend happens on Saturday morning. $50M+ is locked.
Down the chart
The End of Oak Street did $4,902,312 and a -44% third weekend for $46.0 million, and it is still narrowly ahead of PAW Patrol in the race those two started when they opened within $756,000 of each other on August 14. Mutiny is the problem: $2,766,362 and a -64% second weekend against the -45% we called off a B+ CinemaScore, and a $40 million budget makes a $21 million finish a write-off. Tony took $2,220,448 in week four and Spa Weekend $1,194,796 on a -61%.
The two smallest openers are worth a line each for opposite reasons. Finding Emily did $708,905, which reads like a disaster against the $4 to $7 million we predicted until you notice Focus opened it on 681 screens instead of the wide break we assumed. That was our error, not the film's: an 88% Tomatometer and an 89% audience score on a $1,040 per-screen average is a platform release doing fine. Idiots did $707,759 on 1,110 screens for IFC and dropped 52.5% from Friday to Saturday, which is the whole story in one number.
How we did
Five of the nine calls we published on Wednesday landed inside their bands: Brand New Day, Coyote vs. Acme, The Odyssey, Insidious and PAW Patrol. Of the four misses, The Dog Stars and Mutiny were genuine reads that went wrong, Idiots came in under the only range anyone published, and Finding Emily was a screen-count error, not a demand call. We will take five from nine on a five-opener weekend, though Mutiny's -64% is the one to learn from: we set -45% off the B+ CinemaScore and ignored our own note that its Saturday had come in below its Friday in week one.
Looking ahead
Labor Day weekend closes the summer, and it closes it with the all-time record just out of reach. Rentrak had the season at $4.598 billion through Sunday against 2013's $4.756 billion, needing $158 million from eight days that are not going to produce it. By Any Means and Onslaught open into the holiday and neither is built to change that, so Brand New Day should make it six straight while it crosses $900 million. The real turn comes on September 11, when Practical Magic 2 finally takes a weekend off it.
