A brutal and expansive winter storm, named Fern, has swept across the United States, delivering a profound chill not just to temperatures but to Hollywood's box office fortunes. The severe weather event has triggered widespread cinema closures and pushed national weekend ticket sales to their lowest total of the year so far, creating a significant disruption for the entertainment industry.
Box Office Plummets Amid Widespread Disruption
More than 400 movie theaters across the nation were forced to shutter their doors as ice, snow, and widespread power outages stretched from Texas to New England. This massive disruption dragged the entire domestic box office down to an estimated $58.4 million for the weekend, according to industry reports from Variety. This figure marks the weakest weekend performance of 2026 to date and represents a concerning 9% dip compared to the same period last year.
Mercy Claims Top Spot in Treacherous Conditions
Despite the treacherous conditions that kept many audiences at home, Chris Pratt's new sci-fi thriller, Mercy, managed to debut at No. 1. The film earned an estimated $11.2 million, narrowly ending the five-week reign of Avatar: Fire and Ash at the top of the charts. Industry analysts note that while this opening is modest for a production reportedly budgeted at $60 million, it landed within expectations given the unprecedented scale of the weather-related challenges.
The film, which earned nearly $5 million from previews and Friday screenings alone, is now tracking toward a three-day total of approximately $12.6 million from 3,468 theaters. Major chains were heavily impacted; Cinemark shut down 24 theaters in cities including Louisville and Little Rock, while Regal closed 22 sites, with dozens of independent cinema circuits also going dark.
Storm Fern's Intensifying Grip on the Nation
The storm's impact intensified dramatically as the weekend progressed. More than 220 million Americans across 34 states were under winter weather warnings—almost two-thirds of the country's population—as Storm Fern moved from the southern Rocky Mountains towards the Northeast. Forecasters warned that the damage to infrastructure could rival or exceed the typical aftermath of a hurricane.
New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Washington DC faced forecasts of up to one inch of snow per hour from Sunday morning, while the South braced for a rare phenomenon known as thunder sleet. The epicenter of the chaos was expected to hit the northeast by mid-morning Sunday, with up to 16 inches of snow forecast for much of the tri-state area.
Other Box Office Holdovers Weather the Storm
Avatar: Fire and Ash slipped to second place with $7 million in its sixth weekend, bringing its domestic total to $378.4 million and its global haul to an impressive $1.378 billion. While still a commercial juggernaut, industry observers note this third installment has not matched the sustained dominance of its predecessors, 2009's Avatar and 2022's The Way of Water.
Disney's Zootopia 2 held strong at No. 3 in its ninth weekend, adding $5.9 million. This pushed its domestic total past the $401 million mark, further cementing its status as the highest-grossing animated Hollywood film of all time.
Widespread Travel Chaos and Power Outages
The box office downturn coincided with severe travel and utility disruptions across the country. Over 802,000 households were left without power across Texas, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Tennessee, where the storm first made landfall. Furthermore, more than 13,000 flights were cancelled over the weekend, with Sunday's cancellations already being the most on any single day since the coronavirus pandemic, according to aviation analytics firm Cirium.
Major airports faced severe operational challenges. All Saturday flights were canceled at Will Rogers International Airport in Oklahoma City, with Sunday morning flights also called off. Dallas–Fort Worth International Airport, a major national hub, saw more than 700 departing flights canceled on Saturday and nearly as many arriving flights scrapped. Significant disruptions also piled up at airports in Chicago, Atlanta, Nashville, and Charlotte.
Record Cold and Official Warnings
The storm brought record-breaking cold alongside the snow and ice. The Midwest experienced wind chills as low as minus 40°F, a temperature at which frostbite can set in within just 10 minutes of exposure. A reading of minus 36°F in Rhinelander, Wisconsin, on Saturday morning was reported as the coldest in almost three decades.
Officials at all levels urged extreme caution. New Jersey Governor Mikie Sherrill announced restrictions on commercial vehicle travel and a 35 mph speed limit on highways, stating, "We are expecting a storm the likes of which we haven't seen in years." She added, "It's a good weekend to stay indoors." President Donald Trump had approved emergency declarations for at least a dozen states by Saturday, with more expected.
Meteorologist Allison Santorelli of the National Weather Service warned, "The snow and the ice will be very, very slow to melt and won't be going away anytime soon, and that's going to hinder any recovery efforts." The Federal Emergency Management Agency pre-positioned emergency commodities, staff, and search and rescue teams in numerous states in anticipation of a prolonged crisis.
As communities hunkered down, reports emerged of vehicles hitting fallen trees and trees collapsing onto houses in areas like DeSoto Parish, Louisiana, where more than half of all electric customers lost power. With recovery efforts expected to be slow and difficult, the entertainment industry, like much of the country, now faces a challenging path back to normalcy following Winter Storm Fern's devastating passage.
