Kane Parsons' YouTube short-series-turned-movie is breaking box office history this weekend, with the $10 million budgeted Backrooms scoring A24's biggest opening ever with $81 million at the domestic box office.
20-year-old Parsons dethrones Chronicle director Josh Trank to become the youngest filmmaker in history to have a film open at #1 in North America. At the same time, YouTube Curry Barker's Obsession—which cost a mere $750,000 to produce—is still on the rise during its third weekend in theaters, grossing $26.4 million. It should end the weekend with $104.7 million in total from the U.S.
While excited Hollywood studio executives will now be searching feverishly for the next YouTube sensation-turned-mega hit, Backrooms and Obsession have done The Mandalorian and Grogu no favours whatsoever.
As we first reported on SFFGazette.com, it slipped to #3 during its second weekend. It's now on track to earn $24 million, marking a significant drop of 70% from its Memorial Day weekend debut. While Disney maintains that The Mandalorian and Grogu will be more valuable for them in terms of merchandise and theme park ticket sales, this is a troubling result for the first Star Wars movie since 2019.
The marketing campaign was lacking, and the consensus seems to be that The Mandalorian would have been better served remaining on Disney+. Eager for more theatrical content after Bob Chapek's massive streaming spend, former Disney CEO Bob Iger pushed to bring Din Djarin to the big screen alongside a Moana TV series that became Moana 2. The latter was a massive hit, but The Mandalorian and Grogu soaring to anything close to $1 billion is downright impossible.
While Backrooms and Obsession have found success overseas, it's in the U.S. that they've really taken off. That helped The Mandalorian and Grogu a little, with it dropping 53% this weekend with $27.8 million. Combining $137.4 million from the domestic box office and $109.2 million from abroad, the Star Wars movie sits at a so-so $246.6 million worldwide.
There's now a long way to go until it reaches Solo: A Star Wars Story's $393 million haul, though the big difference there is that Solo cost over $300 million to produce, compared to The Mandalorian and Grogu's far more modest $165 million.
"The Mandalorian and Grogu is a fun, pulpy reminder that Star Wars doesn’t need to grow up; it just needs to be entertaining," we said in our review. "Jon Favreau's action-packed love letter delivers exactly the crowd-pleasing adventure fans have been craving."
In The Mandalorian and Grogu, the evil Empire has fallen, and Imperial warlords remain scattered throughout the galaxy. As the fledgling New Republic works to protect everything the Rebellion fought for, they have enlisted the help of legendary Mandalorian bounty hunter Din Djarin (Pedro Pascal) and his young apprentice Grogu.
Directed by Jon Favreau, the movie also stars Sigourney Weaver and Jeremy Allen White. It's produced by Jon Favreau, Kathleen Kennedy, Dave Filoni, and Ian Bryce, with music composed by Ludwig Göransson.
The Mandalorian and Grogu is now playing in theaters.