Weekend Box Office: BACKROOMS Floors the Industry with Star Wars-Level Opening

Key Takeaways

Total 3-Day Weekend Gross:
$178,915,452 | +3.5% Last Week / +19.5% Weekend 22, 2025

Yellow walls mean plenty of green for A24. Surpassing even the wildest imaginings of how well it could do at the box office, the mini major’s Backrooms expanded the lore (and audience) from the online horror mythology into a mountain of cash with a staggering $80M+ opening. Rather than cannibalizing its low-budget horror counterpart Obsession, the Focus Features title improved its weekend gross by another +10%. As a result of these two upstart disruptors, theaters are seeing a huge uptick from both last week and year-over-year, way ahead of this frame in 2025 when the Lilo & Stitch dominated its second weekend.

• Top Title: Backrooms (A24) | $81.45M / 3,442 Screens / $23,665 PSA | Week 1
• Top Opener: Backrooms (A24) | $81.45M / 3,442 Screens / $23,665 PSA | Week 1
• Best PSA: Backrooms (A24) | $81.45M / 3,442 Screens / $23,665 PSA | Week 1

1. Backrooms
A24 | NEW
$81.45M 3-Day Opening Weekend | $118M Global Total

A24’s liminal horror experience Backrooms took in an estimated $81.45M from 3,442 screens for a $23,665 Per Screen Average, setting a new opening weekend record for the distributor. That figure is almost identical to the $81.67M The Mandalorian and Grogu earned in its debut last weekend, though the new Star Wars had a much lower PSA ($18,993).

Here’s how the 3-Day looked, including $10.4M from Thursday previews…

• Friday – $38.4M
• Saturday – $24.7M
• Sunday – $18.3M

Backrooms was such a surprise that exhibitors scrambled to add screens at the last minute to meet the surging demand. The debut more than triples the former A24 opening weekend record, the $25.5M bow of 2024’s Civil War. It also makes 20-year-old Kane Parsons the youngest director to have a #1 movie, as well as the biggest for a first-time director with an original film. Critics seemed pleased as well with an 89% Rotten Tomatoes score, though audiences were a little more tempered at 74% audience score and “B-” CinemaScore.

Backrooms hit the bullseye for a new generation of moviegoers, with 86% of ticket buyers under 35, two-thirds under 25, and 44% under 21. A good deal of the success comes from the relatively untapped domain of YouTube, where the original lore videos have been racking up hundreds of millions of views for years. That was combined with the simplistic high concept appeal and what Warner Bros.’ Michael De Luca told a PGA audience this weekend of the filmmakers behind Backrooms and Obsession: “They’re making movies for their audience who have been subscribing to their channels for years. That’s been the proving ground. So by the time the movies come out, they’re calibrated to please that audience.”

Here is how demographics looked…

• 38% Caucasian
• 33% Latino and Hispanic
• 13% Black
• 10% Asian American
• 6% Native American/other

Overseas numbers for Backrooms came in at $36.5M, launching in markets like UK, Italy, Australia, Mexico, Brazil, Netherlands, Scandinavia, South Korea, Taiwan and Saudi Arabia. The global total stands at an estimated $118M.

Other Notable Performances

Holding tight to second place, Focus Features’ Obsession shot up in gross the third frame in a row with an estimated $26.4M for a +10% over Frame 2. Domestic total passed the century mark with $104.7M, now ahead of every installment of Blumhouse’s Paranormal Activity except the first ($107.9M), which it will succeed tomorrow. Global is $148M.

On the flip side, Disney Lucasfilm’s Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu stalled out by dropping to #3 with $25M, a -69% drop in its second frame. The performance came in below Solo: A Star Wars Story’s sophomore weekend take of $29.39M (-65.2%) and marks the franchise’s biggest second weekend drop of the Disney era after The Last Jedi‘s -67.5%. This puts the domestic total at $137.36M, with foreign numbers ($109.2M) failing to take up the slack as the two-week global total stands at $246.6M, or -to put it in perspective- less than The Force Awakens‘ domestic opening weekend ($247.96M). Expect a further siphoning of the audience towards the kiddie-friendly fantasy of Masters of the Universe next weekend.

Two smaller newcomers failed to make a big impression, with Tri-Star’s The Breadwinner at #5 with an estimated $7.5M and StudioCanal’s Pressure at #7 with $5.7M. That Breadwinner number alongside an “A-” CinemaScore is similar to the median result of any given faith-based movie. Although this was not officially in that category, star Nate Bargatze’s persona as a clean comedian certainly courted that audience for the Mr. Mom clone. Meanwhile, Pressure tried to tap into boomer appeal with a WWII story of the Allied invasion of Europe under General Eisenhower (Brendan Fraser). That audience dug it, with 95% audience score and an “A” CinemaScore, but it was essentially a one-quadrant movie.

Next Weekend

Backrooms will have to contend with two new openers to keep the number one spot next weekend. Paramount’s Scary Movie (2026) will directly challenge Backrooms for the top spot, while Amazon MGM’s Masters of the Universe will battle it out against Obsession for third place.

Sunday Studio Estimates | Weekend 22 – 2026
Total 3-Day Domestic Gross: $178,915,452 | (+19.5% vs 2025)