I dunno, guys. Nothing makes sense anymore. I know I’ve asked this before, but should we stop placing any stock in tracking?

Our number one movie–by a landslide–is Backrooms, which brought in an absolutely bonkers $81 million. Read that again. A movie about wandering around empty rooms from a YouTuber opened to $81 fucking million! That’s just insane. This is by far the best premiere ever for A24, crushing 2024’s Civil War. Actually, in a matter of days, it will eclipse Marty Supreme as the hipster studio’s biggest film ever, and will become the first in their history to cross the $100 million mark stateside. What words can I even use for this? This is just nuts.

Wanna know where projections had Backrooms just a few weeks ago? $15-$20 million. As its release date got closer, tracking got a bit more optimistic, predicting it would enter the $40 million range. To clarify, that also would’ve been a crazy good opening for this type of film! But in the end, it nearly doubled even those numbers. What the fuck.

The weird thing is your mother still probably doesn’t know what Backrooms is, as A24 didn’t do a marketing campaign nearly as aggressive as they did for Civil War. They simply counted on the YouTube audience showing up on their own. Online ads are how this one was sold, and even those didn’t go anywhere crazy. The kids just love those creepy internet shorts, even if the film is supposedly dividing fans with a “B-” CinemaScore, although baffled newcomers who had no idea what they were buying a ticket for might’ve played a factor there.

But the insanity doesn’t end there. Obsession saw itself going up from its previous weekend’s take a second time. As I said in the box office report which I totally published last week, that almost never happens. The movie is already Focus Features’ biggest ever in the states with $104 million (although it will be difficult to top the global take of 2019’s Downton Abbey). Again, absolutely nuts! Reminder that this crazy girlfriend adventure cost a reported $750,000 to make before it was picked up by Focus for roughly $15 million. I think it’s safe to say it’s turning in a bit of a profit.

Elsewhere, The Mandalorian & Grogu–which is super fun, by the way–took a bit more of a nosedive than expected, although I don’t think comparisons to Solo are necessarily fair. That origin story opened during a different era of the box office when “Thursday previews” actually meant night time showings. Nowadays, “opening night” is more or less a thing of the past for this sort of thing. What I’m saying is that aligning a three-day premiere with what was really a four-day premiere is inevitably going to make legs seem weaker than they actually are. In any case, Mando has a bounty of $137 million so far.

Next weekend, YouTube strikes again with the series finale of The Amazing Digital Circus, although confusingly (probably since it’s a Fathom Event) most theaters only have two showtimes per day. So we’re not going to see Pomni top the box office, although she could make $20 million, which would also be insane in its own right. Also, the most important movie of the year–Masters of the Universe–faces off against Scary Movie.

Anyway, the top ten, via The Numbers