What a wild weekend at the movies. Independence Day weekend is historically a massive cash cow for Hollywood, but the 2026 4th of July box office gave us a fascinating mix of hard-fought victories, massive historic milestones, and a few downright brutal superhero crashes.
With the United States celebrating its 250th birthday, family barbecues and the ongoing World Cup clearly kept some audiences away from the multiplexes, leading to a weekend where just about everything underperformed expectations. Still, a win is a win.
Here’s how the holiday box office shook down.
1. The Minions Claim the Crown—But With Sluggish Energy
Universal and Illumination’s Minions & Monsters officially took the #1 spot this weekend, bringing in $36.4 million over the three-day frame and $61.4 million over its five-day holiday opening. While a domestic crown and a $160 million global debut week are nothing to scoff at, this is an unusually soft start for the usually invincible Despicable Me franchise (for context, 2022’s Minions: The Rise of Gru opened to a massive $107 million three-day).
Opening a giant animated sequel just two weeks after Pixar’s behemoth Toy Story 5 might have forced parents to choose between their favorite franchises—and the 4th of July fireworks did the rest of the damage.
2. Toy Story 5 Crosses a Massive Milestone
Even though it was dethroned after a dominant two-week run, Disney and Pixar have plenty to celebrate. Toy Story 5 grabbed $31 million in its third weekend. While it dropped a steeper-than-expected 56%, the film has already accumulated a towering $366.3 million domestically. Woody and Buzz are proving that nostalgia still has plenty of gas in the tank.
3. Young Washington Captures the Patriotic Spirit
Angel Studios found the perfect counterprogramming window for the United States’ Semiquincentennial. Young Washington, a historical drama focusing on George Washington’s early military service during the French and Indian War, marched into third place with $20.8 million. It represents one of the studio’s best-ever opening weekends, proving that targeting faith-based and history-loving demographics during a patriotic holiday remains a bulletproof strategy.
4. Kryptonian Krash: Supergirl Plummets
The biggest horror story of the weekend wasn’t a scary movie; it was DC’s Supergirl. After a highly disappointing opening last week, the superhero flick suffered a cataclysmic 74% drop, scraping together just $9.6 million in its sophomore frame. With poor audience word-of-mouth and a steep decline, James Gunn and DC Studios will likely be looking at a significant financial loss on this one.
5. Disclosure Day Holds the Line
Rounding out the top five is Disclosure Day, bringing in another $6 million. It crossed the coveted $100 million mark domestically this weekend, proving to be a highly resilient summer hit for audiences looking for a break from family-friendly animation.
Other Notable Milestones: Obsession Makes History
Just outside the top five, the horror sensation Obsession grabbed $5.3 million in its eighth weekend. More importantly, it officially broke the $400 million mark worldwide ($245.3M domestic / $157.8M international). For an original horror movie to hit those kinds of numbers in its two-month theatrical run is absolutely staggering.
How Obsession Made History This Weekend
By pulling in $5.3 million this weekend and officially crossing the $400 million mark globally ($403.1M to be exact), the psychological thriller achieved several historic milestones:
The Sub-$1M Budget King: Produced for a shoestring budget of just $750,000, Obsession has officially broken a 53-year-old record to become the highest-grossing film in history with a production budget under $1 million. It surpassed Bruce Lee's 1973 martial arts masterpiece Enter the Dragon ($400M), securing an absolutely staggering return on investment.
An Extinct Box Office Trajectory: In its early weeks, Obsession became the first movie since Steven Spielberg’s E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial in 1982 to actually increase its box office haul in both its second and third weekends of release. In modern cinema, where horror movies typically plummet 50–60% in week two, its numbers went up by 39% in week two and another 14% in week three thanks to unparalleled word-of-mouth.
The 40-Day Top Ten Streak: It is now the only horror/genre film in history to remain in the box office top ten for over 40 consecutive days. It did this without ever hitting the #1 spot on an opening weekend, showing a level of theatrical endurance that completely out-legged massive studio blockbusters.
Focus Features' All-Time Champion: It officially eclipsed every title in Focus Features' history to become the distributor's highest-grossing film of all time, both domestically and globally.
A Historic Record for Content Creators: Written and directed by Curry Barker, a 20-year-old filmmaker who initially built his following creating shorts on YouTube, the film represents an unprecedented leap from independent digital content creation to a record-breaking global theatrical phenomenon.
It's easily the biggest, most unpredictable underdog box office story of the last decade.
Furthermore, this was the first weekend Obsession was available to stream at home. The Curry Barker directed film will release on physical media next week, on July 14. To be clear, the 4K Collector’s Edition will be the one to get and includes Barker’s commentary and “Obsession Unleashed.”
The Takeaway
Hollywood might be looking at a total weekend that was down about 24% year-over-year, but the overall summer is still pacing 12% ahead of last year. This weekend felt less like a rejection of the movies and more like a testament to audiences choosing barbecues, beaches, and fireworks over the cinema.
Next weekend brings Disney’s live-action Moana and the horror continuation Evil Dead Burn. Will the box office bounce back to life?
