Welcome to spring, everyone! We have a galaxy sized movie to talk about at the April box office that’s already had a head start prior to the month’s first weekend, but will there be anything else worth seeing that will capture people’s attention in what’s normally a quiet month?
Even though summer doesn’t technically arrive until June, the tradition in the movie world is that the summer movie season begins when May arrives, which more often than not makes April the calm before the storm. It can be risky to schedule something major in April when it is likely going to get swept away or buried when the big summer blockbusters hit. This May might be a little different than what has been normal, given that “Avengers: Doomsday” was slated to open on May 1, but got delayed to December. After that change, nothing really came to take its spot. I could be wrong, but “The Devil Wears Prada 2” doesn’t seem like something that will do Avengers numbers at the box office, but more about that next month. For this month that does mean these releases will have a little more runway than what’s normal, which might be especially helpful for the King of Pop at the end of the month.
As teased in the beginning of this post, though, Mario is already off running. Is there anything that can stop it or will Mario pull the clean sweep on the month? That movie’s incoming domination is doing a great job of picking up where March left off. At a domestic total of $625.3 million, this past March didn’t come anywhere near pre-pandemic levels, the record of which is still held by March 2017 with $1.171 billion earned. This March also failed to match the $749.4 million of 2024 where “Dune: Part Two” ruled supreme, but it was up 57.2 percent from March 2025. That might be more of an indictment on how bad that March was, but the likes of “Project Hail Mary” and Pixar’s “Hoppers” did provide some much needed life to the box office as both earned over $140 million domestically in March alone. Mario is now set to feed off that and continue the 2026 momentum upwards. So let’s now dive deep into Mario and what it’s challengers will be as we move forward through April.
Last month in my round-up of mentioned sources, I noted that my main source for release date information, the-numbers.com, was down when I was typing up my post. As it turns out, they were busy rebuilding their whole site, a project for them that is not yet complete. But they do have their release schedule up, so I’ll be back to using that for the release date information for this post, while also using the likes of Box Office Pro, Box Office Mojo, and IMDb for other research purposes. With that noted, my main focus is on the movies scheduled for a wide release in the United States and Canada and are always subject to change.
April 3 – 5
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| Universal's "The Super Mario Galaxy Movie" |
As referenced a few times in the intro, the movie of the month for April is The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, and it had a head start on the weekend already by opening on Wednesday, April 1. This is a follow-up to the 2023 smash hit “The Super Mario Bros. Movie,” which broke out in a phenomenal way for Universal and Nintendo by earning a total of $1.359 billion worldwide, with $574.9 million of that coming domestically. And it wasn’t just a huge theatrical hit, but it’s also had a very long and successful life on streaming via both Netflix and Peacock. A smash hit like that pretty much guarantees the sequel to be a success, regardless of quality. And it’s not even worth looking at what the critics score has been because this is the exact type of movie that is very critic-proof. Feeding off the success of the first movie, this franchise has jumped straight into adapting the “Super Mario Galaxy” games, perhaps a more Gen Z friendly approach, with a central premise of Bowser Jr. kidnapping Princess Rosalina, forcing Mario, Luigi, and Peach to embark on a mission to go save her. Lest anyone be disappointed that they skipped about 30 years worth of games, the movie made sure to provide nods or references to just about every one of those games in its chaotic, high-energy plot, while also providing Easter Eggs to many other Super Smash Bros. characters that aren’t even necessarily Mario related.
In regards to the movie’s box office, this will be an easy one to track. The 2023 movie had the literal exact same release strategy, opening on a Wednesday prior to the first weekend of April. And through two days of official results, that movie made $58.3 million on that first Wednesday and Thursday. Comparatively, “Mario Galaxy” has made a nearly identical $59.1 million on Wednesday and Thursday. While it’s possible that “Mario Galaxy” winds up a bit more frontloaded, the comparison nonetheless is that “Mario Bros.” made $146.4 over its traditional 3-day weekend, for a 5-day opening total of $204.6 million. The likely outcome based on numbers so far is that “Mario Galaxy” comes very close to matching that, but at the very least, this is guaranteed to be the first $100 million opening weekend of 2026.
While this weekend’s other major release will not come remotely close to challenging “Mario Galaxy,” A24’s The Drama will be hitting 3,087 theaters this weekend and will thus aim for a spot somewhere in the top five with “Project Hail Mary” and “Hoppers” – March’s holdover releases. The biggest draw for this movie is its two lead stars, Robert Pattinson and Zendaya, who play a happily engaged couple about to get married. While on the surface this more or less has the appearance of a romantic comedy, and while that may not necessarily be inaccurate, the plot revolves around an unexpected twist that happens during the week of the wedding. A confession that sends the wedding off the rails. As one critic put it, the movie becomes less about the wedding and less about the confession, and more about what type of secrets we can reveal to those closest to us. The movie has had generally favorable reactions, currently holding a 79 percent score on Rotten Tomatoes, although there has been plenty of mixed reaction – centered mainly around the movie’s said surprise twist. Word of mouth will be curious to watch because of this, especially if certain moviegoers aren’t fully aware of what they’re getting themselves into, which is often typical of an A24 release. The expected box office is in the $10-15 million range, which would slot it into third place.
The final wide release of the weekend sends us back to our country’s origins with the movie A Great Awakening, which centers around the friendship between Benjamin Franklin and Reverend George Whitefield. A man of reason and a man of faith coming together to form an unlikely friendship that helped shape this country prior to the American Revolution. Of note, this is Easter weekend that we’re heading into. Neither February nor March, leading up to Easter, provided any major faith-based release for Christian audiences, so this seems like it has the potential to fill that gap. It’s not a super wide release, so breakout potential is limited, but it is still being released in 1,289 theaters, which is enough to make some sort of mark if it connects with its target audience. Anywhere from $3-5 million would likely be enough to slip into fifth place at the box office. Last weekend’s third place movie made $4.9 million, so beyond the heavy hitters the rest of the market is quiet enough for it to fit in.
April 10 – 12
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| Universal's "You, Me & Tuscany" |
Before we dive into new releases each weekend, let’s play a quick game of where “Mario Galaxy” could end up. Again, the easy comparison is to look directly at the 2023 predecessor. In which case, “Mario Bros.” dropped just 37 percent in Weekend 2 to make $92.3 million. However, in case “Mario Galaxy” ends up being more frontloaded, which would be normal for a sequel, I’ll also look at last April’s “A Minecraft Movie.” That celebrated an opening weekend of $162.8 million, but then had a slightly steeper drop in Weekend 2, falling 52 percent. If “Mario Galaxy” falls a similar 52 percent, which is still a great hold for a movie opening above $100 million, that would lead to a second weekend of $70.3 million.
Either way, there’s three new releases this weekend, and none of them are likely to hit $70 million in their entire run, let alone in one weekend, so it’s a battle for positioning in the top 10 rather than a race for No. 1. The leader of that trio will be what looks like a more traditional romantic comedy and that is You, Me & Tuscany. Starring Halle Bailey and Regé-Jean Page, the movie is about a young lady named Anna (Bailey) who makes a brash decision to fly to Tuscany to visit an abandoned villa of a rich man she just met. When she gets discovered by his family, she pretends to be his fiancée so she doesn’t get in trouble. That’s the context where she meets the man’s cousin Michael (Page) and starts to actually fall in love with him. Because there wouldn’t be a rom-com without a fun bit of twisted lies and deceptions, right? “Sometimes the wrong place is right where you need to be,” the trailer declares. $8-12 million is the range where Box Office Pro has this one, although the high end might be similar to last month’s romance film “Reminders of Him,” which opened to $17.9 million. That one was based on a novel, this one is not. But this one does have a more recognizable lead couple, so that could perhaps make up the difference.
The other two movies are a pair of horror films that are just happy to be here. The first that I’ll bring up is Faces of Death, which is sort of a remake of the original 1978 horror film “Faces of Death.” That movie presented itself as an actual documentary centering around a pathologist who presents the viewer with footage showing different gruesome ways of dying. Most of the footage was faked for the film, but some included pre-existing footage of real deaths. It was initially received with negative reviews, but gained a cult following afterwards and spawned several sequels. This 2026 movie stars Barbie Ferreira as a woman who moderates a YouTube-like platform, responsible for filtering out offensive or violent content. In the process of this, she discovers a group that appears to be re-enacting the murders from the original “Faces of Death” movie. This is a co-production from IFC Entertainment and Shudder, who have formed a strong partnership as of late. IFC takes care of the theatrical release prior to it eventually showing up on the Shudder streaming service. There’s already been four such instances of this in 2026 and so far the biggest theatrical earner this year was “Forbidden Fruits” from March, which opened to $1.2 million from 1,525 theaters. The other three had an opening weekend range of $140,000 to $700,000. These are low budget horror films, so a decent theatrical run is nice, but not required. “Faces of Death” will premiere at Beyond Fest on April 5 prior to its wide theatrical release this weekend.
The other horror film coming out this weekend is the Canadian horror film Hunting Matthew Nichols. The movie was written, directed, and stars Markian Tarasiuk as… himself. The movie is shot at least partially mockumentary or found footage style and is about a girl named Tara Nichols whose brother Matthew went missing 23 years prior. Tarasiuk plays a documentary filmmaker who sets out to help her finally solve the case. Tarasiuk says that he was inspired by Netflix true crime documentaries and made this film as a satire to some degree around the world involving forest creatures. He also mentioned he was inspired by “The Blair Witch Project” and “The Ring.” The movie was shot over several weeks in December on Vancouver Island to capture a gray, rainy, sense of dread. This was actually initially released back in October 2024 at the Newport Beach Film Festival. It has bounced around to a few other festivals since then before finally getting a wide release this weekend. Reaction from festivals appears mixed to negative, although it only has three official reviews on Rotten Tomatoes and those are all positive. Not glowing reviews, but not rotten splatters, either. Matthew Monagle of Certified Forgotten writes, “There are worse things to be than a film that wears its admiration for ‘The Blair Witch Project’ on its sleeve” in his 3/5 review posted a few days ago.
April 17 – 19
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| Warner Bros.' "The Mummy" |
Continuing the “Mario Galaxy” game here, the pathway of it following the original movie’s trajectory would result in a Weekend 3 total of $59.9 million. That’s the number “Mario Bros.” made in its third weekend in 2023, after falling a mild 35 percent. The contrast of a steeper fall again involves a look at “A Minecraft Movie,” which fell 48 percent in its third weekend. That path would leave “Mario Galaxy” at $36.5 million.
If the result is the steeper route, that’s not a completely unrealistic mark for this weekend’s major new release, Lee Cronin’s The Mummy. This comes via Warner Bros., who had an excellent horror year last year. On this exact weekend last year, they released “Sinners,” which opened to $48 million. Then in August they launched “Weapons” to $43.5 million. I highly doubt Lee Cronin’s new re-imagining of The Mummy franchise will hit in that stratosphere, but in terms of a horror movie from Warner Bros., I’m simply stating what’s in the realm of possibilities. A more apt comparison would be to what this movie actually is, the latest in a series of modern takes on classic monster franchises, like 2020’s “The Invisible Man” and last year’s “Wolf Man.” Lee Cronin’s vision here involves the young daughter of a journalist being found after going missing for eight years, but the reunion is not exactly pleasant as the trailer hints that she was found in a 3,000 year old mummy tomb and has transformed into quite the creepy horror villain that reminds one of Lee Cronin’s most recent film, “Evil Dead Rise.” That movie also opened in the third weekend of April, in 2023, to $24.5 million. Looking at our other mentioned monster movies, the high comparison would be “The Invisible Man,” which opened to $28.2 million. However, “Wolf Man” provides the low end of the spectrum as that opened to just $10.9 million. Box Office Pro is currently projecting this in the range of $12-20 million, so they are right in between that potential range.
Three additional mid to small budgeted movies will be added the market this weekend. Of those three, the first I’ll bring up is Normal, the latest action movie starring Bob Odenkirk. In this movie, Odenkirk plays a sheriff who takes a job as a substitute sheriff in a small, unassuming town called Normal, Minnesota. The goal is to escape and relax a bit from the personal and professional turmoil. What could go wrong in this little town? As one might expect going into the movie, there’s a bit of situational irony here as this town called “Normal” winds up being anything but normal as a botched bank robbery exposes a dangerous secret beneath the town’s calm exterior that Odenkirk now gets dragged into the middle of as the new sheriff. The easy comparison here is to Odenkirk’s recent movie “Nobody” that also deals with subverted expectations of a suburban dad being a secret assassin. “Nobody” opened to $6.8 million in March 2021, while its sequel, “Nobody 2,” opened to $9.2 million last summer. That also seems like a fair range for this outing.
I have a bit of conflicting information for this next one in regards to release strategy, but at some point this month the psychological thriller Mother Mary will be available for audiences to watch. For clarification, the release date is April 17. The question is, is it limited or wide on the 17th? One source says it’s wide, the other says it’s limited on the 17th and expands wide on the 24th. And if the latter is accurate, then how wide will the expansion be? Regardless of that, the movie surrounds the very scarred relationship between a pop star named Mother Mary (Anne Hathaway) and her former best friend and costume designer (Michaela Coel). On the eve of her big comeback, Mary comes to her former friend in need of a dress. Based on the trailer, things look like they get very dark and twisted after that. The movie is directed by David Lowery, who, in between his Disney movies (“Pete’s Dragon,” “Peter Pan & Wendy”), is very good at going dark and twisted with his ideas (“A Ghost Story,” “The Green Knight”). These usually land in a very polarized way with audiences, which is also par for the course for distributor A24. This is not a ghost story or a love story, they say in the trailer. This is a prayer, a song, a dress, a communion, a betrayal, a sacrifice, a rebirth. Whatever all that means, they also note that there’s new music written by Jack Antonoff, Charli XCX, and FKA Twigs. It seems like audiences that choose to take a chance on this one are in for quite the wild ride, for better or for worse.
The final movie that I’ll bring up for this weekend is a smaller movie out of the Toronto International Film Festival last year, and that is Wasteman. This movie is a British prison drama starring David Jonsson and Tom Blythe. It follows a man named Taylor (Jonsson) who has kept himself out of trouble in prison and thus hopes to get himself eligible for early parole, when he forms a bond with a fellow prisoner named Dee (Blythe). When a vicious attack takes place, it forces Taylor to have to choose between protecting Dee and keeping his own parole chances alive. The movie had its release in its home country of the U.K. back in February, after the aforementioned festival premiere in September, so American audiences are getting it late. But the reaction thus far has been very strong. There’s been 23 reviews counted on Rotten Tomatoes and all of them are positive. The buzzy festival releases don’t always translate to mainstream interest, especially when dumped in the middle of April, but this is one for cinephiles to take note of and add to their watch list, because those who have up to this point have been rewarded.
April 24 – 26
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| Lionsgate's "Michael" |
The final weekend in April will be the bookend to the “Mario Galaxy” comparison. As outlined in previous sections, it seems likely to three-peat at No. 1, with no realistic challengers. But can it pull a full sweep of April? Using the same comparisons, if it holds as well as its predecessor, “Mario Bros.” fell another mild 32 percent in its fourth weekend, earning $40.8 million. In regards to the potential steeper decline, “A Minecraft Movie” fell 44 percent in its fourth weekend. That route would lead “Mario Galaxy” to a $20.5 million total.
Regardless of which route “Mario Galaxy” takes, this weekend does provide a very strong challenger that I also briefly referred to in the intro, and that’s the musical biopic Michael. These musical biopics have arrived in a very fast and furious way over the last several years. As long as audiences are happy with them and continue to show up, Hollywood is going to continue to say, “OK, who’s next?” The answer for that question in April 2026 is the King of Pop himself, Michael Jackson. A logical choice on the surface as Michael Jackson was one of the most popular singers ever. And they’ve tapped his own nephew, Jaafar Jackson, to play Michael, which adds a certain level of authenticity. The tricky thing with this particular movie is that there’s a massive elephant in the room. Michael Jackson in his later years was a very controversial figure. There’s two different parties of people when it comes to that conversation: the people who want nothing to do with Michael because they’re certain he’s guilty and the people who continue to claim it’s all a very cruel witch hunt. Is the movie going to address any of that? Probably not. Is that an issue? Depends on which party you’re a part of. Michael’s own daughter Paris recently posted on Instagram that the movie is a sugar-coated fantasy land full of inaccuracies and lies. She claims the filmmakers ignored the notes she submitted. “The film panders to a very specific section of my Dad’s fandom that still lives in the fantasy and they’re going to be happy with it,” she added.
Some might be upset at me for bringing this all up in introducing the movie. For what it’s worth, I’m not taking a stance in this post, but the journalist in me feels like this is a necessary thing to mention. I’ll let you make of it what you will. What does this all mean in regards to the box office? Well, like Paris said, regardless of facts or fiction, the audience that the movie panders to will be very happy. That means money and tickets purchased. It’s also worth noting that not all of these musical biopics have succeeded. Bruce Springsteen, Aretha Franklin, and Whitney Houston were all subjects of musical biopics that flopped. But the popularity of Michael seems like it will put it more in line with “Elvis” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” that were huge hits. “Elvis” opened to $31.2 million and went onto make $151.4 million domestically, while “Bohemian Rhapsody” opened to a massive $51.1 million and also held very well, finishing with $216.3 million. An opening in that $30-50 million range should be enough to topple “Mario Galaxy,” but it could be close. Box Office Pro actually predicts $60-75 million for “Michael,” which I think is a bit high, but they’re the experts, so I feel it’s important to point out.
Moving on from “Michael,” there’s three smaller films to bring up from this weekend. The first is the action comedy Over Your Dead Body. This is a movie about a couple who go on a vacation to try to reconnect, only to figure out they both have plans to kill each other, which puts a mild damper on things. It’s actually an English-language remake of the 2021 Norwegian film “The Trip.” In that movie, the couple’s murderous plans go awry when three fugitives take them captive. I’m not sure exactly what direction this remake decides to take things, but the trailer does suggest that there’s more going on beyond just the two of them. The remake stars Jason Segal and Samara Weaving as our main couple, but also includes Timothy Olyphant and Juliette Lewis in supporting roles. This is another movie distributed by IFC Entertainment, which I talked about briefly in Weekend 2 when going over “Faces of Death.” IFC and Shudder have a strong partnership where IFC takes care of the theatrical, while Shudder then later gets it on their streaming service. While there’s been four of those already this year, with “Faces of Death” being the fifth, “Over Your Dead Body” is not a horror and doesn’t appear to have Shudder involved, so it looks like it’s just IFC on their own. Shudder or not, though, the highest opening IFC release of 2026 is “Forbidden Fruits” at $1.2 million. “Over Your Dead Body” does have the higher trailer count than “Faces of Death,” and the popularity of Samara Weaving, who just barely opened “Ready or Not 2” in March, but it’s not a horror film and doesn’t have the franchise connection, so it’s a toss-up as to which IFC movie in April will perform the best.
Next up is the crime thriller heist film Fuze, which is about a WWII bomb that gets discovered on a busy construction site in the center of London. Based on the trailer, this appears to be “the ultimate distraction” to set up the perfect heist. The movie parallels the Weekend 3 movie I talked about, “Wasteland,” in that it is also a British film that had its premiere at last year’s Toronto International Film Festival. The reviews aren’t a perfect 23 for 23 like that movie, but it still stands at an 80 percent Rotten Tomatoes score out of 35 reviews counted, so definitely not bad, even if not quite as hyped. The movie is directed by David Mackenzie, who is best known for directing the 2016 film “Hell or High Water,” and stars Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Theo James, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, and Sam Worthington. Like “Wasteland,” this is not likely to be a big box office player here in the States and will have already had its U.K. release prior to its U.S. release, but it still provides a late April action thriller for anyone who wants to give that a roll.
The final wide release of this weekend, and thus final movie discussed in this preview, takes us back to seventh century Arabia with the movie Desert Warrior. The movie is led by Anthony Mackie, but also includes Aiysha Hart, Sharlto Copley, and Ben Kingsley. The story sees an Arabian Princess team up with a bandit to confront a ruthless emperor who wanted her to be his concubine. The movie is being distributed by Vertical Entertainment, whose two wide releases from 2026 include “We Bury the Dead” and Luc Besson’s “Dracula,” which opened to $2.5 million and $4.4 million respectively, which thus felt like fair comparisons if this does indeed hit a full wide release. That was going to be it for this movie, but then I stumbled into the fact that this was the most expensive film to be produced in Saudia Arabia, as it shot there from late 2021 into early 2022. Said budget of the film is reported to be $150 million, which blew my mind when I read that, given that a $2-4 million domestic opening seemed to be the realistic scenario. I’m not sure what the full story of this movie’s production is, but it seems like quite the intense one and I have no idea how they plan to make that money back.
