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‘Scary Movie’ Tops Box Office, Slaying ‘Masters of the Universe’ and Adding to Low-Budget Streak

(L-R) US actor/producer/writer Shawn Wayans, US actor Anthony Anderson and US actor/producer/writer Marlon Wayans attend Paramount's "Scary Movie" premiere at the Paramount theater in Los Angeles on June 3, 2026. (AFP)
(L-R) US actor/producer/writer Shawn Wayans, US actor Anthony Anderson and US actor/producer/writer Marlon Wayans attend Paramount's "Scary Movie" premiere at the Paramount theater in Los Angeles on June 3, 2026. (AFP)
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‘Scary Movie’ Tops Box Office, Slaying ‘Masters of the Universe’ and Adding to Low-Budget Streak

(L-R) US actor/producer/writer Shawn Wayans, US actor Anthony Anderson and US actor/producer/writer Marlon Wayans attend Paramount's "Scary Movie" premiere at the Paramount theater in Los Angeles on June 3, 2026. (AFP)
(L-R) US actor/producer/writer Shawn Wayans, US actor Anthony Anderson and US actor/producer/writer Marlon Wayans attend Paramount's "Scary Movie" premiere at the Paramount theater in Los Angeles on June 3, 2026. (AFP)

The summer box office is booming — but not because of the usual suspects.

After three weeks of indie horror dominance at the box office, the slasher spoof “Scary Movie” topped ticket sales with $55 million over the weekend, according to studio estimates Sunday, easily besting the far-from-mighty “Masters of the Universe.”

A new order has lately come to movie theaters, which have seen Gen Z ticket buyers flock to the horror hits “Obsession” and “Backrooms,” both made by YouTubers-turned-filmmakers. Those movies have even outshone The Walt Disney Co.’s “Star Wars: The Mandalorian and Grogu.”

This weekend, comedy was the underdog champ. Though the genre has been all but left for dead in theaters, the sixth “Scary Movie” notched a franchise-best $105.5 million global launch. The Wayans brother comedy even outdid its primary satirical target, the “Scream” franchise. Earlier this year, “Scream 7” debuted with $97 million worldwide.

Both franchises are distributed by Paramount Pictures, though Miramax produced the new “Scary Movie.” Co-written by Marlon, Shawn, Keenan and Craig Wayans, the sequel marks the Wayans’ return to the franchise after their departure over creative differences following 2001’s “Scary Movie 2.”

“This is an outstanding opening for a comedy sequel this far into the series,” said David A. Gross, who runs the movie consulting firm FranchiseRe. "It’s a huge bounceback after the last episode crashed in 2013 when Anna Faris and Regina Hall were excluded. The weekend figure is triple the average for the genre.”

Reviews weren’t good (26% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes) and audience scores (a “B” CinemaScore) were so-so. But that didn’t stop the $30-million “Scary Movie” from dominating its much bigger budget competition.

“Masters of the Universe,” a sword and sorcery action adventure based on the 1980s animated series and Mattel toys, failed to revive the dormant franchise. The Amazon MGM release, the second “Masters of the Universe” film following a 1987 movie of the same title, opened with $29.3 million domestically.

“Masters of the Universe,” starring Nicholas Galitzine as He-Man, added $25 million overseas. But for a film that cost nearly $200 million to produce, a much higher launch was needed to make profitability likely.

It’s Mattel Studios’ first release since 2023’s “Barbie.” But after the extraordinary $1.45 billion success of that film, “Masters of the Universe” will be closer to a flop for the toy company.

A24’s “Backrooms,” last weekend’s top release, slid steeply on its second weekend, dropping 68% with $25.9 million. But “Backrooms,” a $10 million movie based on 20-year-old Kane Parson’s YouTube series remains a record-breaking phenomenon. It's now A24’s highest grossing film ever with $212 million worldwide, moving ahead of “Marty Supreme."

In a near tie for third place, Focus Features’ “Obsession” grossed $25.6 million in its fourth weekend. That marked a paltry 7% drop from the previous weekend for 26-year-old Curry Barker’s horror sensation. Not accounting for inflation, no horror movie has ever had a better fourth weekend.

“Obsession,” about a man who wishes his crush returned his affections, was made for less than $1 million. It’s now grossed $152.1 million domestically and $224.8 million worldwide — a record for Focus.

In its third weekend, “The Mandalorian and Grogu” fell all the way to sixth place with $10 million. It was even bested by Fathom Entertainment’s “The Amazing Digital Circus: The Last Act,” a combination of the last two episodes of the animated series. It collected $12.7 million.

A few other movies hit milestones.

Lionsgate’s Michael Jackson biopic “Michael” became the studio’s highest grossing film ever with $898 million globally. That puts it ahead, not accounting for inflation, both the highest grossing entries in the studio’s “Twilight” and “Hunger Games” franchises.

And 2026 got its first billion-dollar movie. “The Super Mario Galaxy Movie” crossed $1 billion worldwide for Universal.

The weekend overall was up a remarkable 63% from the same weekend last year, according to Comscore. Ticket sales on the year are up more than 13%. Next weekend, Steven Spielberg’s “Disclosure Day” debuts.

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Entertainment

Can DC Blend Horror with a Superhero Movie? ‘Clayface’ Wants to Blur Genres

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Tom Rhys Harries in a scene from "Clayface." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Tom Rhys Harries in a scene from "Clayface." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
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Can DC Blend Horror with a Superhero Movie? ‘Clayface’ Wants to Blur Genres

This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Tom Rhys Harries in a scene from "Clayface." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)
This image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Tom Rhys Harries in a scene from "Clayface." (Warner Bros. Pictures via AP)

The dominant movie genres of the past decade, superhero films and horror, have usually stayed, like bashful teenagers on the dance floor, on separate sides of the multiplex.

But when James Gunn and Peter Safran were plotting the projects with which they wanted to launch their era of DC Studios, writer-director Mike Flanagan came in with a pitch that would fuse both genres.

Neither Safran nor Gunn were looking for a standalone movie about Clayface, a lesser-known villain from the Batman comics. But they were won over by Flanagan’s vision, which eventually became a script by Flanagan and Hossein Amini.

“It fit within the broader framework of how James and I saw the broad spectrum of film and television shows we want to make,” says Safran. “But it really was Mike Flanagan’s passion and pitch. You always look for volunteers and not recruits.”

Not many studios would push “Clayface” to the front of the pack, but Gunn, who started in horror, and Safran, who helped launch “The Conjuring” franchise, made “Clayface” — with James Watkins eventually coming on to direct — part of their first wave of DCU films, following “Superman” and “Supergirl.”

“Clayface” is a darker detour for DC. And, if it proves successful, it just might open up a darker frontier for comic book movies.

“From the get-go, this was not designed to be a traditional superhero movie,” Safran says. “It was always supposed to be a character-driven story that uses the DC mythology. If you took the DC elements out of it, it would just be a great horror movie.”

That makes “Clayface” something unusual in the normally calculated realm of superhero movies. It’s R-rated. It’s modestly budgeted at $40 million. And it stars the relatively unknown Tom Rhys Harries as a little-known DC villain.

“A lot of people wouldn’t necessarily know who Clayface is, but they wouldn’t need to,” says Watkins, the Welsh filmmaker of “Speak No Evil” and “The Woman in Black.” “It’s its own movie.”

‘Supergirl’ disappointment puts pressure on ‘Clayface’

That, Safran says, is by design. He and Gunn have emphasized filmmaker-first projects at DC, carving a more idiosyncratic, multi-genre path that has won them fans but also added some degree of risk.

“Clayface,” which opens in theaters Oct. 22, will debut shortly after Skydance and David Ellison’s takeover of Warner Bros. Ellison is keeping Gunn and Safran to lead DC, even though they’re coming off a misfire in the box-office disappointment of “Supergirl.” That puts more pressure on “Clayface” to perform.

“If you look at the cumulative choices that we’ve made, I think it’s pretty clear we’re trying to do things differently,” says Safran. “Not everything is going to work. The pressure we feel for ‘Clayface’ is honestly the pressure we feel for everything we put into the world.”

There have been a few movies to meld horror and superheroes together, including Wes Craven’s “Swamp Thing” (1982), Sam Raimi’s “Darkman” (1990) and “Brightburn” (2019), a sinister twist on the “Superman” origin story that Gunn produced.

But Clayface, a Batman villain created in 1940 by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, is still an unlikely character to put center stage. In the comics, he began as Basil Karlo, a B-list actor who, furious that he wasn’t cast in a horror remake he had previously starred in, wears the movie’s Clayface costume to kill the film's actors.

Winning over skeptical DC fans

Some fan skepticism has followed “Clayface.” Last week, Gunn defended the choice on the social media platform Threads after a user asked, “Who the (expletive) asked for a ‘Clayface’ movie?”

Gunn replied: “Although it may seem like it, Hollywood isn’t a place where the only way to make a movie is the public voting on what IP they want to see that they’ve seen countless times before.”

Watkins’ film, taking inspiration from the two-part episode “Feat of Clay” from “Batman: The Animated Series,” twists the original Clayface story slightly. Rising movie star Matt Hagen (Harries) is disfigured by a mob boss (Eddie Marsan) and rapidly falls out of Hollywood. After numerous unsuccessful surgeries, he resorts to an experimental process created by the scientist Dr. Caitlyn Corr (Naomi Ackie) that uses an untested, claylike living organism to rehabilitate his face.

“Part of the joy was being surprised at what’s looking back at me in the mirror every day,” says Harries, smiling.

To a large degree, “Clayface” progresses as a character study, one of an actor whose livelihood falls away from him and whose attempts to get back on the red carpet turn increasingly dark. His journey, though, hinges less on vanity than on his relationship with Caitlyn.

“I was approaching it the whole time like: Matt thinks he’s in a romantic comedy,” says Harries. “The fulcrum of the whole thing is his relationship with Caitlyn Corr. Without that, you don’t get the propulsion for Matt to be doing what he decides he needs to.”

Shape-shifting in genre and body

As “Clayface” devolves, Matt’s face and body increasingly shape-shift in chilling body horror transformations. That can include his own body changing or Matt taking the form of other characters around him. While CGI and visual effects were used, Watkins leaned into practical effects.

“I like horror when it’s most relatable, when it actually gets under the skin,” Watkins says.

In the third act of “Clayface,” that’s taken to body-changing extremes as Matt dons the appearance of those around him. Often, actors were swapping into scenes moment to moment with Harries.

“We’d often play a scene with Tom and then someone else would play the same scene,” says Watkins. “Sometimes Tom would copy them, sometimes they would copy Tom.”

If the superhero movie has sometimes been too rigidly formulaic, “Clayface” proves the genre has more elasticity than it's been shown to have. In “Clayface,” even the lead role was an ensemble piece.

“I won’t mention any actor’s name because it’s a bit of a spoiler,” Watkins says. “But one of the cast members was saying to me his son asked, ‘So who are you in the movie?’ And he said, ‘I’m Clayface.’”

Entertainment

Bollywood Actor Tiger Shroff Shot at in Mumbai, Three Suspects Held

Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff at the screening of 'Ikkis' in Mumbai in December 2025. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP/File
Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff at the screening of 'Ikkis' in Mumbai in December 2025. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP/File
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Bollywood Actor Tiger Shroff Shot at in Mumbai, Three Suspects Held

Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff at the screening of 'Ikkis' in Mumbai in December 2025. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP/File
Bollywood actor Tiger Shroff at the screening of 'Ikkis' in Mumbai in December 2025. Sujit JAISWAL / AFP/File

Indian actor Tiger Shroff was shot at in Mumbai on Sunday, police said, adding that three suspects have been detained.

Shooters opened fire at the 36-year-old actor as he was leaving a private event in the city's upscale Juhu area on Sunday evening, according to Police official Mohit Garg.

Aside from being India's financial capital, Mumbai is also the heart of Bollywood, the country's Hindi-language film industry, said AFP.

"Tiger Shroff is safe and Mumbai police has deployed different teams to investigate further," Garg told reporters.

Two people were injured in the incident, including the actor's driver, though Shroff did not sustain gunshot wounds, police said.

Three suspects have been rounded up in Rajasthan, another Indian state.

"Preliminary questioning revealed that two of them have one case each against them, one related to theft and the other under the Arms Act," police official Tejaswani Gautam told reporters.

Police have yet to establish a motive for the shooting.

Shroff is known for action films including the "Baaghi" franchise and "War".

Entertainment

Jesse Eisenberg, Julianne Moore Bring Curtain Down on London Film Festival with ‘The Debut’

US actors Jesse Eisenberg (L) and Julianne Moore (R) attend the premiere of "The Debut" and the closing night of the BFI London Film Festival 2026 in London, Britain, 18 October 2026. (EPA)
US actors Jesse Eisenberg (L) and Julianne Moore (R) attend the premiere of "The Debut" and the closing night of the BFI London Film Festival 2026 in London, Britain, 18 October 2026. (EPA)
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Jesse Eisenberg, Julianne Moore Bring Curtain Down on London Film Festival with ‘The Debut’

US actors Jesse Eisenberg (L) and Julianne Moore (R) attend the premiere of "The Debut" and the closing night of the BFI London Film Festival 2026 in London, Britain, 18 October 2026. (EPA)
US actors Jesse Eisenberg (L) and Julianne Moore (R) attend the premiere of "The Debut" and the closing night of the BFI London Film Festival 2026 in London, Britain, 18 October 2026. (EPA)

Actor-filmmaker Jesse Eisenberg said he wrote the lead role in his musical comedy "The Debut" with Julianne Moore in mind, praising the Oscar-winning star as "the greatest actress in the world" as the film closed the London Film Festival on Sunday.

"I just thought, this is Julianne Moore, and I will write every scene with her in mind and what she likes to do and what she's great at," Eisenberg, who wrote the screenplay and directed the film, told Reuters on the red carpet.

Moore stars as Mona, a shy New Jersey housewife who is thrilled ‌to land a ‌role in a community theater musical.

Drawn to the experience ‌by ⁠a longing for ⁠something missing in her life, Mona finds purpose and community through the show.

"She's moving towards something, knowing that there's something that she needs in her life," Moore said. "Then that thing leads you towards yourself and towards community, which is really the most valuable thing of all."

The film, which marks Eisenberg's latest directing effort following his BAFTA-winning screenplay for "A Real Pain", features seven original songs written by the filmmaker. The numbers appear in the fictional stage ⁠production "Nosy Neighbors", a deliberately light-hearted, 1990s-inspired musical performed by a cast ‌including "The Little Mermaid" star Halle Bailey.

"I love songwriting, I ‌love musical theater music and I wrote these songs in earnest," Eisenberg said.

Mona's early struggles ‌on stage test the patience of director Jerry, played by "The Holdovers" star Paul Giamatti, prompting ‌her to adopt an increasingly committed method acting approach.

Eisenberg said Moore's interpretation of Mona allowed him to make a "weird movie" that still felt grounded.

"She is so unusual, she's so strange," he said. "It allowed me to make a movie that wasn't realistic."

While Mona takes method acting to ‌extremes, the "Now You See Me" star said all actors, including himself, draw on some version of the technique.

"I always wind up ⁠feeling whatever the ⁠character feels," he said. "So if my character is miserable, I spend the shoot just miserable. But I don't realize it's for the character. I just think, 'Oh God, I must be doing terribly in the movie'."

Eisenberg, who plays a minor role in "The Debut", said the story was inspired by his own childhood experiences in community theater, where he discovered "a family and a home and a life" he liked.

Patrick Fabian, who plays Mona's husband in the film, said theater offers something increasingly rare: a chance for people to connect in person with one another.

"It brings people together, and these days, it gets them out of their screens and into the dark together to watch whatever is going on," Fabian said. "I think that's a real bonding thing."

"The Debut" brought the curtain down on the 70th London Film Festival, where Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa's "Imperium" won Best Film in the Official Competition.