Cocktails and Movies Weekend POURcast: April 3rd-5th, 2026
Every Friday, we here at Cocktails and Movies serve up the Weekend POURcast: a quick-hit guide to what’s new in theaters, what could matter at the box office, what’s fresh on streaming, and what cocktail should be in your hand while you make your picks. It’s the fast, slightly buzzed game plan for your movie weekend, whether you’re heading for the multiplex or planting yourself on the couch and judging everything from a safe distance.
This weekend looks like the rare frame where one giant studio play walks into theaters and expects everyone else to politely get out of the way. According to Box Office Mojo’s April release calendar, The Super Mario Galaxy Movie opens wide on April 3, alongside IFC’s Over Your Dead Body, while titles like Kontinental ’25 and Ricky arrive in limited release.
That means the real question this weekend is not who opens at number one. Come on. We all know the answer to that unless civilization collapses between now and Friday. The real question is whether anything else can carve out a lane while Project Hail Mary is still in the market and Hoppers keeps hanging around like the reliable friend who somehow never gets kicked out of the party. Last weekend, Project Hail Mary led the domestic chart with $54.1 million, followed by Hoppers at $12.2 million, with They Will Kill You debuting in third place at just under $5.0 million.
Last Weekend in Review
Last weekend was still very much Project Hail Mary’s world. It pulled in $54.1 million in its second frame, bringing its domestic total to $163.8 million. Hoppers remained sturdy in second with $12.2 million, and They Will Kill You came in third with a $5.0 million debut. Reminders of Him and Dhurandhar The Revenge rounded out the Top 5 with $4.7 million and $4.6 million, respectively.
That matters because this weekend’s slate is built very differently. Last weekend was a holdover chart with one clear champion. This one adds a gigantic family title that could eat up a huge chunk of audience attention immediately. If The Super Mario Galaxy Movie lands the way it looks like it wants to, this weekend could shift from “sci-fi event season” to “every parent in America just bought popcorn.” The smaller films opening around it will need either strong word of mouth or a very specific audience to avoid getting flattened.
New in Theaters This Weekend
The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
This is the big one. Box Office Mojo lists The Super Mario Galaxy Movie as a wide April 3 release from Universal, with Glen Powell, Anya Taylor-Joy, Chris Pratt, and Jack Black in the featured cast listing. Genre-wise, it checks basically every commercial box imaginable: adventure, animation, comedy, family, and fantasy. That is not a movie. That is a studio trying to build a money vacuum.
More importantly, it arrives at exactly the right time. Spring box office has already gotten a lift from Project Hail Mary, and now here comes the all-ages crowd-pleaser with a giant built-in audience and the kind of brand recognition that can pull in kids, nostalgic adults, and casual moviegoers who just want something easy and fun. This feels like the definition of a four-quadrant swing.
Over Your Dead Body
IFC’s Over Your Dead Body also opens wide this weekend, and the title alone sounds like it wants to be watched with a drink already in progress. Box Office Mojo classifies it as an action-comedy-thriller and lists Nikolai Kinski, Kayla Radomski, Jason Segel, and Jennifer Amaka Pettersson among the cast. In a weekend dominated by a giant animated release, this has a shot to counterprogram for adults who want something stranger, meaner, or at least less aggressively family-friendly.
Kontinental ’25
For the art-house crowd, Kontinental ’25 opens in limited release from Outsider Pictures. Box Office Mojo tags it as a comedy-drama starring Eszter Tompa, Gabriel Spahiu, Adonis Tanta, and Oana Mardare. This is the sort of title that probably is not going to light up the national chart, but it could become one of those “have you heard about this?” movies if critics and specialty audiences start buzzing.
Ricky
Also arriving in limited release is Ricky, a drama starring Stephan James, Titus Welliver, Andrene Ward-Hammond, and Sheryl Lee Ralph. It looks like one of the more grounded options on the board this weekend, especially compared with mushroom kingdom spectacle and whatever chaos Over Your Dead Body is planning to unleash. Sometimes a straight dramatic play can benefit when the wider marketplace is overloaded with louder stuff.
Box Office Forecast: April 3rd-5th, 2026
1. The Super Mario Galaxy Movie
$78M to $98M
This thing has every possible advantage working in its favor: wide release, family appeal, brand recognition, and a release corridor that is not exactly crowded with other massive crowd-pleasers. Unless it somehow faceplants out of nowhere, this should open at number one without breaking a sweat. This is the definition of a studio betting on a known property to rule the weekend.
2. Project Hail Mary
$24M to $32M
After a $54.1 million second weekend and a $163.8 million domestic total, Project Hail Mary still looks strong enough to hold second even with Mario arriving to steal a lot of oxygen. It may lose the crown, but it should not vanish. Adults still want a theatrical event, and it already proved it has legs.
3. Hoppers
$7M to $10M
Family competition will hurt, no question, but Hoppers has already shown decent staying power with $12.2 million last weekend. It may take a hit from The Super Mario Galaxy Movie, but it should still hang around the upper tier because families do not all move in perfect lockstep and some audiences like sticking with what they already know.
4. Over Your Dead Body
$5M to $8M
Wide release helps. Adult counterprogramming helps. Being one of the few true newcomers in the market helps. It probably is not breaking out into blockbuster territory, but it has a decent shot to land in the middle of the Top 5 if audiences want something with a little more bite than cartoon spectacle.
5. They Will Kill You or Reminders of Him
$3M to $5M
Last weekend, They Will Kill You debuted at $5.0 million and Reminders of Him pulled in $4.7 million. That makes this fifth slot a coin toss between horror holdover and romance holdover, depending on who drops harder. The edge probably goes to whichever audience feels less tempted by plumbers and galaxies.
New Movies on Streaming This Weekend
If you are staying home, Rotten Tomatoes’ newest-at-home page actually gives you a decent spread this week. Titles listed as streaming on April 3 include Pizza Movie, Standout: The Ben Kjar Story, Papa Bear, A Love Like This, Gaijin, Nikola Tesla’s 19Hz, The Truth and Tragedy of Moriah Wilson, and Feel My Voice.
A couple of those jump out immediately. Rotten Tomatoes lists Standout: The Ben Kjar Story at 100% from critics and 99% from audiences, which is the sort of score that screams crowd-pleaser even if it is not the biggest title on the page. Pizza Movie is sitting at 80%, which feels promising in a very different, much greasier way. And just behind the April 3 debuts, Rotten Tomatoes also shows recent additions like Avatar: Fire and Ash at 66% critics and 90% audience, plus Pillion at 99% critics and 89% audience. So yes, the couch crowd has options.
Weekend Drink Pairing: Vowbreaker Cocktail
This weekend’s cocktail pick is the Vowbreaker Cocktail, an already-published CocktailsandMovies.com favorite that brings a little elegance, a little danger, and just enough attitude to match the mood of the frame. On the site, it’s described as a blood orange French 75 twist with “bubbly wedding-day glam with a red-tinged warning label,” which is a pretty damn good fit for a weekend that includes both giant crowd-pleasing spectacle and darker counterprogramming.
Final Pour
This weekend looks like a changing-of-the-guard frame. Project Hail Mary has owned the room for two weeks, but now The Super Mario Galaxy Movie arrives with the kind of broad commercial reach that can flip the whole chart in one shot. Around them, Over Your Dead Body has a chance to be the adult wildcard, while the specialty crowd gets quieter options like Kontinental ’25 and Ricky. On streaming, there is enough fresh material to make staying home feel like a real choice instead of a fallback.
So the menu this weekend is pretty simple: giant animated crowd-pleaser, lingering space-event movie, one possible weirdo counterprogrammer, and a couch full of streaming backups. Not the worst way to spend early April. 🍸🍿
