Long Range Forecast: Summer Rolls on with July Releases EVIL DEAD BURN, MOANA

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Long Range Forecast – July 10, 2026

Evil Dead Burn | Warner Bros.

Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $30M – $40M

Here to hopefully add a new chapter to 2026’s horror boom is Evil Dead Burn, the first film in the franchise to hit big screens since Evil Dead Rise, which opened to $24.5M and topped out at $67.2M in 2023.

So far this year, audiences have shown a marked interest in original horror titles from first-time directors, with Kane Parsons’ Backrooms giving distributor A24 its best opening weekend ever with $81.4M, Mark Fischbach’s Iron Lung opening to $17.8M despite being self-distributed, and Curry Barker’s Obsession ($17.1M domestic opening) still holding strong in the top five a month and a half into its release. Though Evil Dead Burn is neither based on original IP nor directed by a first-timer, it’s close on both counts; as a standalone spinoff, the story and characters seem to be original, and though director Sébastien Vanicek did direct an earlier feature (2023’s Infested), it went straight to streaming on Shudder, making this his highest-profile project by a mile.

One strong comp for this release—as a stand-alone entry in a classic horror franchise getting a summer release—is 2024’s Alien: Romulus ($42M domestic opening), which coincidentally was directed by Fede Alvarez, who directed 2013’s Evil Dead reboot ($25.7M domestic opening). Also slightly ahead of the $30M – $40M debut Evil Dead Burn is tracking is last year’s Weapons ($43.5M), also a Warner Bros. horror summer release from a director on his second feature.

Moana | Disney

Domestic Opening Weekend Range: $65M – $80M

A live-action version of contemporary Disney classic Moana comes on the heels of a monster performance from the animated sequel Moana 2, which grossed a billion dollars worldwide. We expect another strong performance from this title—just don’t expect an opening weekend haul as big as the one enjoyed by the studio’s last remake of an animated classic, Lilo & Stitch, which shattered Memorial Day records with a $146M (three-day) debut last year. In a similar vein, we’re not looking at the sort of numbers enjoyed by 2019’s The Lion King ($191.7M domestic opening), the only other entry in Disney’s line of animated remakes to hit theaters in July.

Several factors are at play here, one being the relative recency of the Moana franchise. The Disney animated reimaginings/sequels that have made bank over the last few years (Moana 2, Lilo & Stitch, Zootopia 2) all reinvigorate properties that had been absent from the big screen for at least eight years.

Another potentially limiting factor is competition from other family titles, namely Independence Day weekend’s Minions & Monsters and the already-released Toy Story 5 ($159.6M). That film’s $159.6M opening last weekend, along with its positive critical reception and A CinemaScore, point towards a strong showing well into July, even as Minions and Moana eat into its premium footprint.

Still, with the market boasting so many titles over the summer, a sub-$100M opening for the live-action Moana isn’t as disappointing if it would have been in a year with a scantier release slate. An uptick in tracking in the coming weeks could put Moana in the neighborhood of fellow Disney remakes The Little Mermaid ($95.5M) and Aladdin ($91.5M), each of which went on to be one of the top ten highest-grossing titles of their respective years.

Tracking Updates [As Of 6/26/26]