While Spider-Man and Odysseus ruled movie theaters over the weekend, one surprise film that snuck in at No. 10 at the box office was \u201cCatVideoFest 2026.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 74-minute collection of online cat clips even outperformed A24\u2019s new Anthony Bourdain biopic, \u201cTony,\u201d (which, to be fair, only opened on six screens) and a Meghan Markle and Prince Harry-produced Girl Scouts documentary, \u201cCookie Queens\u201d in theaters.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cCatVideoFest 2026\u201d drew more than $500,000 at the box office. YouTube\/ Oscilloscope Laboratories<\/p>\n
Alysa Nahmias and Meghan Markle at a special screening of the film \u201cCookie Queens.\u201d Roadside Attractions via Getty Images<\/p>\n
\u201cCatVideoFest 2026\u201d hails from Seattle-based filmmaker Will Braden, who combs through over 15,000 kitty clips online to curate the collection. (Even the movie\u2019s IMDB page says the film stars, \u201ca bunch of cats.\u201d)<\/p>\n
The cat video series has been coming out for years, but had its best opening over the weekend, with $568,414 from 255 screens for a robust $2,229 per screen average. (By comparison, Markle and Harry\u2019s doc had a $735 per screen average on 446 screens for an opening of $327,797.)<\/p>\n
The cat fest is distributed by Oscilloscope Laboratories, the hip company created by late Beastie Boy Adam Yauch in 2008.<\/p>\n
But why would audiences show up in droves to theaters to watch cat videos they can see on their phones?<\/p>\n
Seattle-based filmmaker Will Braden combs through over 15,000 kitty clips online to curate the collection. YouTube\/ Oscilloscope Laboratories<\/p>\n
IMDB says the film stars, \u201ca bunch of cats.\u201d YouTube\/ Oscilloscope Laboratories<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a fair question,\u201d the film\u2019s director mused to us on Monday. \u201cI\u2019d love to say it\u2019s all my curation: I do want to work hard for people to feel like it\u2019s not just the algorithm clicking next, next, next.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
But Braden adds that when people see the cat clips communally, \u201cThey\u2019re like, \u2018I\u2019m with my people.\u2019 They can have a whole bunch of laughs, and raise money [some showings have a charity component]. It\u2019s because the experience is unmatched. You have Radiohead on Spotify, but you don\u2019t say, \u2018Why see them in concert?’\u201d<\/p>\n
Theaters are even adding shows as the cat craze grows. International markets are also screening the movie as Hollywood studios continue to make few G-rated movies for all audiences these days. Says Braden of the decline, \u201cIt\u2019s like Taylor Swift, Pixar and us.\u201d<\/p>\n
The film\u2019s so popular, the director\u2019s own cat, Nin, has learned to be desensitized to the sounds of meowing when the director combs through the clips.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"While Spider-Man and Odysseus ruled movie theaters over the weekend, one surprise film that snuck in at No.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":319273,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[33242,489,9,24,63,50622,490,122,124,123,72559],"class_list":["post-319272","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-anthony-bourdain","tag-meghan-markle","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nyc","tag-page-six-hollywood","tag-prince-harry","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-studios"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319272","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=319272"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/319272\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/319273"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=319272"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=319272"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=319272"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}