“Project Hail Mary” hits $164.3M domestic. “They Will Kill You” hits rock bottom. The gap between the two tells you everything about where movies are headed right now.
A $54.5 million second weekend is not normal. Most movies crater after their opening. Project Hail Mary dropped only 32% from its debut, which in 2026 money means people are actually going back and telling their friends to go. That’s word-of-mouth doing its job.
But here’s the thing — this isn’t just a Ryan Gosling win. This is Amazon MGM finally figuring out what it wants to be. For years, they were all over the place. Indie films. Streaming drops. More streaming drops. Nobody really knew what their movie strategy was.
Now they’ve committed to releasing around a dozen films theatrically every year, and Project Hail Mary — already at $164.3 million domestic — is the win they needed to shut everyone up. One movie just proved their whole strategy wasn’t crazy after all.
And Gosling? He was already Oscar-nominated for Barbie and La La Land. But carrying a sci-fi space survival movie solo — as a school teacher trying to save the planet, no less — and turning it into one of the biggest hits of his career? That’s a whole different level. Awards chatter is already starting. Yeah. Already.
Directors Phil Lord and Christopher Miller got fired from Solo: A Star Wars Story back in the day. That was a whole thing. Now they’ve delivered a live-action space epic that crowds are actually showing up for. Twice. Funny how fast Hollywood forgets when the numbers look good.
Then there’s Andy Weir. The guy wrote The Martian. Now Project Hail Mary. Both became massive box office hits. His next book? Studios are going to be fighting over those rights before the ink dries.
Not gonna lie, the other side of this weekend is ugly. They Will Kill You — Warner Bros. and New Line’s new horror release — pulled just $5 million from 2,778 locations. Cost $20 million to make, so after theaters take their cut? That math is brutal. And this comes right after The Bride, their $90 million steampunk Bride of Frankenstein reimagining, bombed globally with only $23.2 million.
Two flops in a row for Warner execs Michael De Luca and Pam Abdy, who ironically helped get Project Hail Mary off the ground back when they were running MGM. Now they’re watching their old movie eat their new movie’s lunch.
Here’s where it gets messy — David Ellison, who co-financed They Will Kill You through his Skydance-backed label Nocturna Pictures, is also the guy in the middle of buying Warner Bros. and merging it with Paramount. So the future boss of Warner Bros. just helped finance one of their worst-performing releases of the year. Yeah. That’s awkward as hell.
Horror as a genre is also struggling right now in ways that should worry studios. Ready or Not 2: Here I Come just earned $4 million in its second weekend, sitting at a dismal $16.3 million domestic total for Searchlight Pictures. The audience for mid-budget horror isn’t showing up — at least not for these ones.
Meanwhile, Bollywood thriller Dhurandhar: The Revenge hit $4.7 million this weekend on nearly 2,000 fewer screens than They Will Kill You. Almost matched a studio horror release. On less screens. That’s not luck. That’s a fanbase that actually shows up — while general audiences stayed home.
Project Hail Mary winning this hard two weekends in a row isn’t just good news — it’s a warning shot to every studio still debating whether theatrical is worth it.
Amazon MGM bet on a real movie star, trusted two directors everyone wrote off, and adapted a book by a guy with a perfect track record. They had a plan and it worked. Simple as that. Warner Bros., on the other hand, is walking into 2026 with two expensive stumbles and a potential new boss watching every move.
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie drops next weekend and it’s expected to be massive — which means the pressure on everyone else just got even higher. Gosling’s got his franchise moment.
The real problem is whether Warner can stop bleeding money before Ellison walks in and starts asking questions.
