Two of this season’s biggest box office hits, “Backrooms” and “Obsession,” have a lot in common. Both are horror films with original scripts, made by directors in their 20s who came from the worlds of YouTube and TikTok — and, together, they have arguably redefined what a summer blockbuster can be.
“Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu” was the No. 1 movie when it opened on the weekend of May 22. But the next weekend, it fell behind two much smaller movies: “Obsession,” directed by 26-year-old Curry Barker, and “Backrooms,” directed by 20-year-old Kane Parsons, which debuted at the top of the box office.
“Masters of the Universe,” Mattel’s attempt to build on the success of “Barbie,” opened at No. 2 behind the “Scary Movie” reboot on the weekend of June 5, and dropped behind “Scary Movie,” “Obsession” and “Backrooms” in its second weekend.
“Obsession,” which was made on a budget of $750,000 and has now been a top-five movie in the domestic box office for five weekends in a row, has achieved an increasingly rare feat. It sold more tickets in its second weekend than in its first, then sold even more tickets in its third.
Movies typically sell more tickets in their opening weekend than the ones that follow, and the post-debut drop-off has grown steeper in recent decades. A New York Times analysis, using data from Box Office Mojo, found that the median change in sales between a film’s opening and second weekend went from a drop of 28 percent in the 1990s to about 54 percent in the 2020s.
“Backrooms,” which was made on a budget of $10 million and has now been a top-five movie for three weekends in a row, became the highest-grossing movie ever for its distributor, A24, within its first week.
The first week of ticket sales for “Backrooms” was on a par with some of the biggest releases of the year, including “Project Hail Mary” and “Michael,” the Michael Jackson biopic.
If “Backrooms” and “Obsession” are a sign of things to come, major franchise films may continue to find themselves up against competition from a generation of filmmakers who bring new ideas to the screen — and their social media followers to theaters.
Notes: All figures in this article are adjusted for inflation (April 2026 dollars) and represent the box office for the United States and Canada only. All weekend totals, including holiday weekends, are the sum of sales on Friday, Saturday and Sunday only. Where noted, figures exclude sales during limited-release periods. Wide release dates are based on data from Box Office Mojo. In cases where a wide release date was not specified, the date on which the film released in at least 600 theaters was used.
