‘Send Help’ Leads Slow Super Bowl Weekend

SUNDAY AM Writethru: After Saturday update…What can be as bad as a 2,000-mile snowstorm that shutters theaters? Why, Super Bowl weekend.

And while it’s not the lowest weekend of the year, it came close with all movies doing $61.6M (per ComScore) versus the $55.1M till two weekends ago when 400 multiplexes turned off the lights due to snow and ice. Today’s business alone for most movies in the top 10 is expected to drop some -60% or steeper off Saturday’s ticket sales. It’s very, very clear, the old days of a major studio rolling the dice on a Taken or a Hannah Montana movie are far gone, and not worth the investment. Better to play into the weekend, and holdover. If you’re going to open at all, play to the margins, play to the niche demos, play at a low P&A, hence the hodge-podge of indie genre, K-Pop and values-based fare (Angel Studios’ Kevin James rom-com Solo Mio which is best of the new bunch with $7.2M in 2nd place after a $3.1M Friday/previews) and an A- CinemaScore and Screen Engine/Comscore PostTrak exits of 82% definite recommend (amazing) and 5 stars/92% positive.

Disney still believes there is a path for 20th Century Studios’ Send Help to $10M, for another No. 1 win in its second weekend (others have it lower at $9.1M).

Markiplier’s Iron Lung is third with a second weekend of $6M, -67%, in weekend 2. That drop was always foreseen given how fan-front-loaded the movie was on its very low marketing cost. That gets the ten-day on the feature take of the indie video game to $31M per ComScore by end of today.

Solo Mio drew 62% women to 38% guys. Sixty percent of the overall crowd was over 45 with women over 25 repping 56% of attendees. Diversity demos were 45% Caucasian, 25% Latino/Hispanic, 4% Black and 5% Asian American. The first rom-com release by Angel Studios played to their demos in the South, Midwest and Mountain with The Harkins Estrella Falls 16 (AZ) the leading single-location gross at $14.8K. While not a faith-based movie per-se, Angel Studios prides itself on values-driven content, which is what this James lost-in-love-in-Italy movie is categorized as. Angel has 2M Angel Guild members (subscribers) who play a monthly fee for access to the Angel streaming platform. They get two movie tickets annually, and the publicly traded distrib markets directly to them. By the end of 2025, Angel doubled their Guild membership over a nine-month period. Solo Mio was a distribution deal, but Angel is on the hook for P&A.

Bleecker Street/Crosswalk’s Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience crooned $5.6M in fourth, but on a global level is the champ with $19.1M as we told you first this AM. Stray Kids was No. 1 on Friday with $3.2M including previews. No audience scores other than that 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. Imax and some PLFs are driving a little over half of the weekend with best markets being South, West, East Canada and South Central. The Santikos Palladium (San Antonio) has become the movie’s highest grossing multiplex for the weekend with $24.7K. The K-Pop moviegoing audience is real on a niche level with this weekend’s take not far from BTS: Yet to Come in Cinemas which played over Super Bowl weekend 2023 to a 5-day of $8M.

Vertical posted a record opening for themselves with Luc Besson’s Dracula at $4.5M after a $2.1M Friday/previews. No CinemaScore but PostTrak ain’t bad with a solid 64% definite recommend and four stars in a movie which pulled in 47% women over 25 and 33% men over 25. The 25-34 set was the pic’s largest at 39%. Women under 25, who only showed up at 13%, gave the movie its best definite recommend at 69%. Caucasians were 45%, Latino and Hispanic repped 35%, with 6% Black and 7% Asian. The Caleb Landry Jones and Zoe Bleu pic is best in the West, Mountain and South Central with the AMC Burbank still the pic’s highest grossing venue with close to $15K. No CinemaScore. Pic’s global grows to $33.2M. Vertical acquired U.S. on this.

Lionsgate’s The Strangers – Chapter 3 has a scary low start out of the wide entries with $3.5M in a tied 7th place with 20th Century Studios’ Avatar: Fire and Ash. In the end, the threequel wraps up as a complete rejection by fans with a D CinemaScore. That’s the lowest of the three movies (Strangers 2 was C- and Strangers‘ C). Post Track is a don’t recommend with a 26% definite recommend (a low figure we rarely ever see) and a half star. Those who showed were 53% men/47% women with 32% between 25-34. Diversity demos were 40% Caucasian, 35% Hispanic/Latino, 15% Black and 4% Asian American. We’ll get into the economics of this in a bit, but the entire trilogy was shot altogether by Renny Harlin for a reported net $20M production cost (foreign sales delivered around 50% to the gross production cost which is much higher than $20M net). In the books, Lionsgate looks at the trilogy as one film not broken out as three. The first two movies grossed $70M worldwide. P&A was low at $5M. The publicly traded Lionsgate claims the trilogy is profitable even though this third one is DOA. How? Given that the trilogy was shot at one film, each installment’s profits spill over into the next. This is par for the course for Lionsgate (and myriad other indie distribs nowadays). Some pics eek out a bit of theatrical, only to make bigger gains in the PVOD window. It’s just the way of the world now: Theatrical is the advertisement for PVOD/the home window.

A24’s expansion of Charli xcx’s mockumentary The Moment from 4 NYC/LA theaters to 581 is seeing $1.68M outside the top ten after $891K Friday and near $500K Saturday. Ten-day total is just under $2.3M.

The 2026 box office for Jan. 1-Feb. 8 counts $748.8M, +9.7% ahead of the same period in 2025.

Updated Sunday figures:

One last word on the First Lady’s documentary….Some are having a cow that Melania fell -67% in its second weekend. What was everyone expecting here over Super Bowl weekend? An expansion of the audience? It’s Super Bowl weekend and clearly the documentary had a frontloaded audience ala Iron Lung. Good on Amazon MGM Studios for keeping the numbers honest. There would be greater concern and suspicion if we saw a great spike in ticket sales or began to get word that there was excessive group sales by right wing groups with auditoriums left empty ala the controversy that surrounded Sound of Freedom.

FRIDAY PM: We always knew it was going to be slow, the question is by how much. Right now, 20th Century Studios’ Sam Raimi movie Send Help is eyeing $10 million in its second weekend at 3,475 sites after a $3M second Friday. If that keeps in line, that’s a -48%, which is pretty damn good for a genre movie. Pic’s ten-day total would move up to $35.8M in North American.

Second for the weekend, is Angel Studios’ Kevin James rom-com Solo Mio, which is also eyeing $3.1M today, including yesterday’s $744K previews, for a $7.6M opening at 3,052 theaters.

Third is going to Bleecker Street’s K-pop concert movie Stray Kids: The dominATE Experience with $3.2M today (including $900,000 from 351 Imax Wednesday previews), and around $5M for this weekend at 1,724 sites. Again, 100% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes. Critics haven’t dared sit through this yet.

Fourth is Vertical’s Luc Besson-directed Dracula with $2.3M today and an $4.8M opening, which would be the distributor’s best yet ahead of We Bury the Dead‘s $2.5M. As we told you, audiences on Rotten Tomatoes like it better than critics, 75% to 57% Rotten.

Fifth is the second weekend of Markiplier’s Iron Lung with an estimated $4.65M at 2,930 theaters, which would rep a 74% drop after a second Friday of around $1.5M. Running cume by Sunday looks to be $29.45M.

Lionsgate’s The Strangers – Chapter 3 at 2,565 is looking at $1.7M today and about a $3.7M opening. Strangers 2 last September opened to $5.8M, while The Strangers – Chapter 1 posted the best beginning of three at $11.8M in May 2024. No RT audience score yet for the critically panned horror pic at 19%.

Where’s Amazon MGM Studios’ second weekend of Melania? She’s seeing $3.5M, off 51%, with a running 10-day total by Sunday of $14.5M.

Last year, Super Bowl weekend was led by the second frame of DreamWorks Animation’s Dog Man ($13.8M), with all titles grossing $54.2M, the second worst weekend of 2025.