Steven Spielberg is back on top of the box office. Universal’s Disclosure Day opened in first place this weekend with $44 million domestically, giving Spielberg his 20th movie to debut at No. 1. The alien encounter thriller also performed well overseas, bringing its worldwide opening total to $92.9 million.
The win marks Spielberg’s return to the science-fiction territory that helped define his early career, following landmark films such as Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial and War of the Worlds. His latest centers on the revelation that humanity is not alone in the universe, blending sci-fi, mystery and conspiracy-thriller elements.
Written by longtime Spielberg collaborator David Koepp, Disclosure Day stars Emily Blunt, Josh O’Connor, Colin Firth, Colman Domingo and Eve Hewson. Blunt plays a Kansas City meteorologist swept into a series of strange events tied to possible extraterrestrial contact, while O’Connor plays a whistleblower trying to expose hidden truths.
The film drew generally positive reviews, with an 80% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes and a 74% audience score. With a reported $115 million production budget, the movie will need a substantial global run to become profitable from theatrical ticket sales alone, but its opening gives Universal a strong start.
The weekend’s overall box office reached $120 million, down from the same frame last year, when How to Train Your Dragon helped drive a $153.7 million total. Still, the broader summer picture remains encouraging. The previous two weekends were ahead of 2025, and the next two frames bring major releases, including Disney and Pixar’s Toy Story 5 on June 19 and Warner Bros. and DC’s Supergirl alongside Paramount’s Jackass: Best and Last on June 26.
Through the first half of 2026, the domestic box office is projected to finish approximately 13% ahead of the first half of 2025. The industry remains on track for its strongest year since 2019, with the full-year domestic forecast currently around $9.1 billion.
While Spielberg topped the weekend, the bigger ongoing story remains horror. Focus Features’ Obsession climbed from fourth place to second in its fifth weekend, earning another $19 million. That represented a decline of only 25%, an extraordinary hold for a genre film. The Curry Barker-directed horror breakout has now grossed $188.4 million domestically and $286.5 million worldwide from a reported $1 million budget.
The film continues to defy normal box office gravity. Rather than declining sharply after opening weekend, Obsession has built momentum across its run, turning into one of the year’s most profitable and talked-about original releases.
Its success has already sparked sequel speculation. Focus Features and Blumhouse are expected to explore another Obsession, but the bigger question may be whether Barker wants to build a franchise immediately or use the breakout to launch more original horror projects. With Barker already attached to other genre projects, including Anything But Ghosts and a new version of The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, the studio may choose patience over speed.
Paramount’s Scary Movie revival fell to third place in its second weekend with $14.5 million, a steep 73% decline from its No. 1 opening. Even with that drop, the film has earned $84.6 million domestically and $173.2 million worldwide in 10 days.
Produced for $30 million, the horror spoof is already a clear financial success. The return of the Wayans brothers, along with franchise favorites Anna Faris and Regina Hall, helped restore the irreverent spirit of the early 2000s series. With the franchise now crossing $1 billion in lifetime global box office, another installment appears likely.
A24’s Backrooms finished fourth with $11.3 million in its third weekend, down 57%. The Kane Parsons-directed horror film has now reached $160 million domestically and $262.3 million worldwide from a $10 million budget.
The movie opened bigger than Obsession, launching with $81.4 million domestically, but has followed a more traditional decline pattern. Even so, Backrooms has become A24’s highest-grossing film ever and a watershed moment for creator-driven horror. The film originated as a YouTube horror series created by Parsons when he was still a teenager, making its box office success a major validation of online-native storytelling moving into theaters.
Parsons has suggested the story is not finished, and while A24 has not officially announced a sequel, the studio’s promotion of the film’s record-setting performance makes a follow-up feel likely.
Rounding out the top five was Amazon MGM’s Masters of the Universe, which fell 71% in its second weekend to $8.7 million. The film has now earned $46.7 million domestically and $86.1 million worldwide after 10 days.
The He-Man movie should now be called Master of Disaster.
That would be a solid number for many movies, but not for a film with a reported production budget of $170 million. The expensive Mattel adaptation has struggled to generate broad theatrical demand, despite the brand’s nostalgia value and a stronger audience response than critical response.
Amazon MGM has pushed back against framing the film as a failure, positioning its theatrical run as only the first stage in a broader monetization strategy tied to Prime and the larger Amazon ecosystem. Still, from a traditional box office standpoint, the film is underperforming relative to its cost.
The weekend leaves the industry with a split narrative. Spielberg delivered a respectable No. 1 opening with a high-profile original sci-fi film, but several expensive franchise plays continue to face pressure. At the same time, smaller horror films such as Obsession and Backrooms have become two of the year’s most important commercial stories.
That may be the defining lesson of early summer 2026: the box office is not rejecting originality. It may be rewarding it.
The question now is whether the coming tentpoles can keep the momentum going, and whether studios will take the right lesson from the horror titles that have been quietly carrying the season.
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