Last month was a history-making month at the box office for the horror genre, with Focus Features’ Obsession and A24’s Backrooms both far exceeding expectations and generating record grosses for their respective distributors. Obsession is the highest grossing movie of all time at the domestic box office for Focus, while Backrooms just had A24’s highest opening.
At the time of this article being written, Curry Barker’s Obsession has hit $150 million worldwide and Kane Parsons’ Backrooms has scared up $117 million at the worldwide box office, and both movies are nowhere near the end of their theatrical runs.
In fact, Backrooms just made another $7.5 million at the domestic box office this past Monday alone, while Obsession added another $5.2 million to its total across the same day.
What makes this story even crazier today is that AMC has announced that May 2026 marked the company’s highest May attendance since the pre-pandemic days of 2019!
An official press release explains, “AMC Entertainment (NYSE: AMC), the largest theatrical exhibitor in the United States and the world, welcomed more than 4.2 million moviegoers to its U.S. AMC Theatres and internationally at its ODEON Cinemas this past weekend, from Thursday through Sunday. After yet another strong weekend at the box office in May, both domestically and globally AMC Entertainment received 25.5 million guests at our theatres, recording the highest-attended month of May since 2019.”
“The most recent weekend attendance continues a trend seen throughout much of 2026, with domestic box office results consistently meeting, and repeatedly exceeding, expectations,” AMC continues. “This weekend, BACKROOMS opened to a media-reported $81 million domestically, becoming the sixth film in the past ten weeks to debut above $75 million domestically in their opening weekends. Other films since March 20 that opened to more than $75 million domestically in 2026 include: THE MANDALORIAN AND GROGU, THE DEVIL WEARS PRADA 2, MICHAEL, THE SUPER MARIO GALAXY MOVIE, and PROJECT HAIL MARY.”
“Also contributing to the weekend’s strong results,” AMC adds, “OBSESSION actually increased its domestic box office gross from the previous weekend, as it also did the weekend before, an extremely rare accomplishment for a wide theatrical release.”
The Wrap also reports that the domestic box office at large hit $1 billion in May 2026 “for the first time since the Covid-19 pandemic,” and notably the first time in industry history that number has been hit without a big tentpole superhero blockbuster from Marvel.
“After years of slumps and lackluster numbers, the box office is finally performing the way it used to,” The Wrap notes.
Obsession and Backrooms alone brought in nearly $200 million of that overall domestic total in May 2026, allowing the horror genre to gobble up a massive piece of that box office pie.
Audiences are returning to theaters, and original horror is a big reason why. Let’s keep it up!
