Some good news: the post-Presidents Day weekend in U.S./Canada wasn’t that slow with all films grossing just over $79M, +2% from a year ago. The 2026 year to date B.O. stands at $1.05 billion, still ahead of 2025 by 7% per industry estimates. Before Super Mario Galaxy Movie arrives to rain cash over the Easter stretch (April 1), March on paper looks like it will continue a momentum with Disney/Pixar’s Hoppers, Amazon MGM Studios’ Project Hail Mary, Searchlight’s Ready or Not 2: Here I Come (which they’re already screening ahead of SXSW, talk about excitement), and New Line’s They Will Kill You. That’s a much better crop than last March with its misfires Mickey 17, Snow White, and Novocaine which gave us fear that moviegoing was truly dead (before A Minecraft Movie showed up).

Sony Pictures Animation’s GOAT started the weekend in a too-close-to-call situation with Warner Bros/MRC’s Wuthering Heights at the domestic box office, and now the horned animal has a $3.2M lead over the R-rated naughty period movie with a No. 1 of $17M (-38%) in its second session. Wuthering Heights saw a second frame of $14.2M in U.S./Canada (-57%, not bad for a female heavy movie, the thinking was this would sink like a stone) and a running domestic cume of $60M. But the greater climax for Heathcliff and Cathy is global where Wuthering Heights minted a combined $40.5M WW weekend ($970K from Imax screens) taking its overall cume to $151.7M in 77 markets.

GOAT doing well around the world as well with a global running cume of $102.3M (oveseas running total is $44M).

Box office might be sluggish over here post holiday, but it’s on fire over in China where the top five pics over New Year’s since Tuesday have racked a cumulative total of $725.9M, led by racing car movie Pegasus 3 ($387.6M/2.6B RmB), Zhang Yimou’s spy thriller Scare Out ($116.2M/786M RmB), fantasy epic Blades of the Guardians ($102.1M/691M RmB), Bonnie Bears: The Hidden Protector ($94.2M/637M RmB) and the Jackie Chan sequel Panda Plan 2 ($25.8M/175M RmB). All figures come from Maoyan.

I Can Only Imagine 2, despite an A+ CinemaScore (just like the first film) and excellent 86% definite recommend, came in at the lower end of its tracking with $8M. And the faith-based demos are present at 51% over 55, and women over 25 at 57%. Go figure. A post-Covid watering down of live-action faith-based audience is a thing (Sound of Freedom and family animated movies completely aside). The Lionsgate/Kingdom Story sequel is playing the Bible Belt track of South, South Central and Midwest with the Penn Cinema 14 in Pennsylvania the highest grossing venue so far for the pic with just over $60k through Saturday. Diversity demos are 65% Caucasian, 21% Latino and Hispanic, 6% Black and 3% Asian American for general audiences.

A24’s U.S. handling of StudioCanal’s Glen Powell movie How to Make a Killing came in at $1.66M on Friday for $3.56M at 1,625 theaters. No CinemaScore or PostTrak scores, but Rotten Tomatoes finally emerged with a 76% audience score versus 47% Rotten critics score. Sorry, these box office figures aren’t good. If there’s any business on the movie, it’s in the West with AMC Lincoln Square the top-grossing location at $16K for this dark comedy. How did a starry project out of A24 go sideways? I understand that story problems were afoot on this lightweight Saltburn (it involves a guy picking off myriad family members) from day one on the set. Glen Powell powered through. A24 took U.S. very early on for $5M. Tested trailers couldn’t save this, so A24 minimized their losses and marketing spend, and here we are with a lower theater count than the wide envisioned. Some critics in L.A. didn’t know there were screenings, and semi-premiere was held a week ago at the Grove on Valentine’s Day (like we didn’t have plans). Onward to PVOD.

Boogeying its way into the North American top 10 is NEON’s Baz Luhrmann-directed doc EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert with $1.4M on Friday and a $3.25M opening at 325 locations with a great $10K theater average. Why so high? Why, Imax screens, of course. Great numbers in Memphis and Knoxville (no shocker there), Los Angeles, NYC, St. Louis, Oklahoma City, Chicago to name a few. It’s 95% fresh with critics and 99% with audiences. Viva the King.

Dying is the New Regency made, 20th Century Studios distributed Psycho Killer. Some say the Disney machine doesn’t know how to market a gory movie, but that’s not what it’s about at all. There was nothing to work with here as the pic’s real killer were moviegoers who buried this movie with one star and a deadly 31% definite recommend on PostTrak and 0% with Rotten Tomatoes critics. Nobody likes it! AMC Burbank is the title’s highest grossing location with $6K. At the end, Psycho Killer maimed $1.6M outside the top 10 in the No. 11 spot, $710K came from Friday and previews. I understand 20th’s contract with New Regency, which was carried over from the Fox-Disney merger, is finally expiring at the end of this year.

Final figures as of Sunday:

via Deadline