In today’s Box Office Breakdown, we analyze six new releases:
Angel Studios’ Solo Mio
Bleecker Street’s Stray Kids: The DominATE experience
Vertical Entertainment’s Dracula
Lionsgate’s The Strangers: Chapter 3
A24’s Pillion
IFC Entertainment’s Whistle
Plus, a full breakdown of the top ten at the box office this weekend.
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20th Century’s Send Help took #1 at the box office for the second week in a row with $10M domestic. This brings its domestic total to $35.8M. Its worldwide total is $53.7M.
Send Help’s 48% week 2 drop is one of Sam Raimi’s best of all time. Just look at his drops for his box office smash hits, all connected to previously existing IP:
Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)
-67% week 2 ($61.8M)
$955.8M worldwide
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
-48% week 2 ($41.3M)
$493.3M worldwide
Spider-Man 3 (2007)
-61.5% week 2 ($58.2M)
$887.4M worldwide
Spider-Man 2 (2004)
-49% week 2 ($45.2M)
$785.4M worldwide
Spider-Man (2002)
-38% week 2 ($71.4M)
$810.9M worldwide
Even though Send Help will not reach the mega totals of the above, it’s looking like it’ll recoup its $40M budget.
It’s nice to see Raimi return to his horror roots. The first film he directed was The Evil Dead (1981), which sparked the cult series of 5 films across 4 decades ($303M WW BO total). The newest one, Evil Dead Burn, is coming this July.
Send Help is pretty much on par with Raimi’s last horror film:
Drag Me to Hell (2009)
-55.5% week 2 ($7M)
$90.8M worldwide
Send Help has strong star power with Rachel McAdams and Dylan O’Brien.
The film had an ok per/screen average of $2.8K across 3475 theaters.
Here is the trailer.
Here’s the breakdown of the rest of the top 10:
$7.2M - Solo Mio (Angel Studios)
$4M budget
RT: 81%
Week 1
This is another non-faith-based, feel-good release from Angel Studios. This one is a rom-com starring Kevin James.
In that sense, Solo Mio outperformed all of Angel Studios’ recent releases in the non-faith-based category:
The Last Rodeo (2025)
$5.4M opening
$15.2M worldwide total (all domestic)
I Was a Stranger (2024)
$1.2M opening
$2M worldwide total (all domestic)
Homestead (2024)
$6M opening
$20.8M worldwide total (all domestic)
Sketch (2024)
$2.4M opening
$10.2M worldwide total (all domestic)
Kevin James used to throw up massive box office numbers with Grown Ups 1 ($40.5M opening, $271.5M WW) and 2 ($41.5M opening, $247M WW) and Paul Blart: Mall Cop 1 ($31.8M opening, $183M WW) and 2 ($23.7M opening, $107.6M WW).
But James hasn’t had a domestic release since Becky (2020), which opened during COVID to $209K and made $1.1M WW. Before that, the last non-animated film he starred in was Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2.
So this is a big win for James and Angel Studios.
$6.25M - Iron Lung (Markiplier Studios)
$26.8M domestic total
$31.2M worldwide
$3M budget
RT: 50%
Week 2
This is a self-distributed, self-financed sci-fi/horror film based on the 2022 indie video game by David Szymanski. It’s written, directed, stars, and is EP’d by YouTuber Markiplier (38.2M YT followers).
It follows a convict exploring a moon with blood oceans in a sealed submarine.
This is a wild success story, as it played in 3015 theaters domestically and a total of 4164 screens worldwide.
Markiplier was able to leverage his audience to drive an incredibly strong theatrical performance. In fact, Markiplier’s fans actually requested their local theaters play his film.
$5.56M - Stray Kids: The DominATE experience (Bleecker Street)
$19.1M worldwide
RT (audience score): 100%
Week 1
This is a solid win for Bleecker Street, which just has domestic rights for this film. No word on what they paid to acquire from Live Nation Studios, the production company, but for a concert doc, these are solid numbers. Universal International has international rights and drove this to $13.5M international (top worldwide release of the weekend).
Remember, A24 re-released iconic Talking Heads concert doc Stop Making Sense, and it opened at $856K and topped out at $5.2M domestic. And Pink Floyd: Live at Pompeii (2025 re-release) made $2.6M domestic. So this smashed both of those domestically.
Of course, Stray Kids, the K-Pop band with 33.1M IG followers, was never going to be as big as these artists:
Taylor Swift: The Official Release Party of a Showgirl (2025)
$30.4M domestic
$50.1M worldwide
Justin Bieber: Never Say Never (2010)
$29.5M opening
$73M domestic
$99M worldwide
But K-Pop films have exploded in popularity in the US recently, with K-pop Demon Hunters' wild success on Netflix.
$4.5M - Dracula (Vertical Entertainment)
$31.3M worldwide
$52M budget
RT: 55%
Week 1
This is the second collaboration between director Luc Besson (The Fifth Element) and actor Caleb Landry Jones, after their critically excellent but commercial failure:
DogMan (2023)
$25K domestic opening
$76.4K domestic total
$4.4M worldwide
Vertical doesn’t have the marketing power of Focus Features, whose recent vampire film Nosferatu (2024) opened nearly 5x higher:
$21.7M opening
$95.6M domestic total
$181.8M worldwide
Overall, Dracula will need to continue to drive a strong international box office if it hopes to recoup. The win here is that Besson got $52M to create his vampyric vision. That’s the most he’s gotten since his semi-flop Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets (2017), which cost $180M and made $225.8M worldwide ($41.2M domestic).
$4M - Zootopia 2 (Disney)
$414.5M domestic total
$1.8bn worldwide
$250M+ production budget
RT: 91%
Week 11
This is the highest-grossing Hollywood animated film of all time, surpassing:
Inside Out 2 (Disney)
$1.699bn worldwide total
However, this is still well behind the highest-grossing animated film ever made:
Ne Zha 2
$2.2bn worldwide total
Zootopia 2 dipped 32% in its 11th week.
Disney and Pixar have consistently proved they can put out animated sequels that outperform the first film by wide margins:
Inside Out 2 (2024)
$154.2M opening
vs. $90.4M Inside Out 1
$653M domestic total
vs. $356.5M Inside Out 1
$1.699bn worldwide
vs. $859.1M Inside Out 1
Moana 2 (2024)
$139.8M opening
vs. $56.6M Moana 1
$460.4M domestic total
vs. $248.8M Moana 1
$1.059bn worldwide
vs. $643.3M Moana 1
Frozen 2 (2019)
$130.3M opening
vs. $93.6M Frozen 1
$477.4M domestic total
vs. $400M Frozen 1
$1.454bn worldwide
vs. $1.28bn Frozen 1
Interestingly, all three of the above films have domestic box office totals well above Zootopia 2. But international for the film has been incredibly strong.
$3.5M - Avatar: Fire and Ash (20th Century)
$391.5M domestic
$1.417bn worldwide
$400M+ production budget
RT: 66%
Week 8
Domestically, Fire and Ash is trailing behind both of the previous Avatar films’ 8th week totals by a big margin:
Avatar (2009)
$629.3M - 8 week domestic total (vs. 3’s $391.5M)
Avatar 3 is down 37.8%
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
$637M - 8 week domestic total (vs. 3’s $391.5M)
Avatar 3 is down 38.5%
Right now, Avatar 3 is far behind the mammoth totals of the first two films:
Avatar (2009)
$749.8M domestic total
$1.994bn international total
$2.74bn worldwide total
Avatar: The Way of Water (2022)
$684M domestic total
$1.64bn international total
$2.32bn worldwide total
This is a disappointing result and could result in the cancellation of the next Avatar film.
$3.5M - The Strangers: Chapter 3 (Lionsgate)
$20M budget (across 3 films)
RT: 18%
Week 1
This opened much lower than the previous film in the series:
The Strangers: Chapter 2 (2025)
$5.8M opening
$15.1M domestic
$21.9M worldwide
RT: 14%
The Strangers: Chapter 1 (2024)
$11.8M opening
$35.2M domestic total
$48.2M worldwide
RT: 21%
The Strangers: Prey at Night (2018)
$10.4M opening
$24.6M domestic total
$31M worldwide
RT: 40%
The Strangers (2008)
$21M opening
$52.6M domestic total
$82.4M worldwide
RT: 50%
An interesting pattern where each sequel seems to earn about half of what the first film in the series earned. However, even though The Strangers: Chapter 3 has been the lowest-opening film in the series, the total series seems to have cost $20M, and across all three films, Lionsgate is now profitable.
$2.43M - Shelter (Black Bear Pictures)
$10M domestic total
$26.8M worldwide
$50M budget
RT: 64%
Week 2
This is a low-performing Jason Statham action film. Especially since the last two non-franchise Statham films had made roughly 3x by week 2:
A Working Man (2025)
$27.9M week 2 domestic total
$89.2M worldwide
The Beekeeper (2024)
$31.2M week 2 domestic total
$162.6M worldwide
In fact, out of the last 10 Statham films, Shelter’s opening last week of $5.5M was just about half as much.
However, this should still be seen as a decent win, as Black Bear is a new distributor in the US. This is just their second film. And this well surpassed their first, Christy, which topped out at $2M worldwide.
$2.38M - Melania (Amazon MGM Studios)
$13.4M domestic total
$13.5M worldwide
$75M budget ($40M acquisition + $35M marketing)
RT: 10% (Critics’ score). 99% (Audience Score).
Week 2
Last week, this was the best opening for a doc in a decade. However, this is the most expensive doc of all time, not including docs with extensive music licensing.
Compare Melania’s 67% week 2 drop with some other better-faring conservative political docs:
Am I Racist? (2024)
-45.7% week 2 drop ($2.5M)
$12.3M worldwide
Obama’s America (2012)
+5% week 2 gain ($33.1K)
$33.5M worldwide
For reference, the highest political earning doc of all time is Michael Moore’s:
Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)
-31.4% week 2 drop ($16.4M)
$222.4M worldwide
#3 highest-grossing doc of all time
What’s different about Melania is that the marketing budget for Fahrenheit 9/11 was less than half at $15M. And that was considered the biggest doc marketing spend ever, as it was The Weinsteins’ Oscar push for the film.
For Melania, many have speculated that Amazon is trying to curry favor with the Trump administration, and this is more of an investment in that relationship.
However, Melania performed well above expectations, especially with Conservatives.
Remember, Amazon MGM bought the film from filmmaker Brett Ratner (dir: Rush Hour) for $40M. There were other bids for the doc, like from Disney, which offered a more reasonable $14M.
These US political films tend to fare poorly internationally, so Melania will not recoup theatrically.
Here are the lowest-grossing films of the week:
$15.7K - The Love That Remains (Janus Films)
$47.2K domestic total
$194.2K worldwide
Premiere: Cannes (Premiere section)
$2K /screen average
Week 2
$8.4K - Natchez (Oscilloscope)
$46.6K domestic total
Premiere: Tribeca (winner: Best Doc)
$2.8K /screen average
Week 2
$3.4K - OBEX (Oscilloscope)
Premiere: Sundance
$45.2K domestic total
$688/screen average
Week 5
A24’s Pillion earned $241.8K in its opening weekend. This is a strong per-screen average of $60.4K/screen across 4 theaters. This film stars Alexander Skarsgård and Harry Melling and premiered at Cannes at Un Certain Regard.
IFC Entertainment’s Whistle earned $720K in its opening weekend. With a low per-screen average of $600/screen across 1200 theaters. The horror film premiered at Fantastic Fest and co-stars Nick Frost.
There are a couple of Oscar-nominated titles doing great business:
$217K - Song Sung Blue (Focus Features)
$38.9M domestic total
$55.3M worldwide
$484/screen average
Week 7
$750K - Hamnet (Focus Features)
$21.8M domestic total
$70.6M worldwide total
$811/screen average
Week 11
Also worth noting that Neon’s Oscar-nominated Sirat did $34.1K/theater across 4 screens for a total of $136.3K. Worldwide it has earned $4.7M