Weekend Box Office: The popularity of 'Elvis' shouldn't have been a surprise
Monday, June 27, 2022 at 1:00PM Two mavericks, one real (Rock star Elvis Presley) and one fictional (Pilot Pete "Maverick" Mitchell), battled it out for the #1 position at the box office and until the actuals come in its a draw. Let's discuss...
1. ELVIS $30.5 -NEW. 3,948 screens
It's always worth celebrating when a non-franchise film opens big. Good on Baz for pulling it off again. Box office pundits seem shocked at how well it did but why? Elvis Presley is the best selling solo act of all time and when it comes to the best-selling musicians, movies about them have built in audiences. Bohemian Rhapsody was a behemoth at the box office. Rocketman was a hit. If they ever make a crowd pleasing bio about Fleetwood Mac or Mariah Carey or The Beatles, those will probably be huge, too. Who knows... maybe even the upcoming Whitney Houston and Madonna biopics will be blockbusters.
1. TOP GUN MAVERICK $30.5 - 5th weekend. 3,906 screens
Tom Cruise's legacy sequel is the $1 film of the year (domestically) with $521.7 in the US alone...
If you don't adjust for inflation it's Cruise's biggest hit of all time. The reviews are truly hyperbolic but it's a good popcorn-munching time in the theater with strong craft elements.
3. JURASSIC WORLD DOMINION $26.4 - 3rd weekend. 4,233 screens
The latest dino-spectacle has been predictably popular with audiences even though it's received (deservedly) terrible reviews. It now stands at a $302.7 domestic gross but it did lose over 400 screens this week so it might be a swift decline now. [Review]
4. THE BLACK PHONE $23.3 -NEW. 3,150 screens
The new horror film stars Ethan Hawke as "The Grabber" a serial killer who abducts children. Horror films generally have good opening weekends with quick drops thereafter unless they cross over to non-horror fans.
5. LIGHTYEAR $17.6 - 2nd weekend. 4,255 screens
That's a 65% drop... for a Pixar picture! Cumulative gross is now at $88.7 but this is weak for Pixar and outright terrible if you consider it a part of the Toy Story franchise. Disney should absolutely not have trained their audiences to expect their golden goose (Pixar) to lay eggs for free on Disney+. Where are they going to make up those billions they used to get theatrically for original films from the division they should have been cherishing the most? Sequels alone cannot be good for a company's longevity. The legacy sequel business is all nostalgia and how long can you milk the same exact nostalgias without anything new to inspire future nostalgia? Disney definitely aims to find out!
6. DOCTOR STRANGE IN THE MULTIVERSE OF MADNESS $1.7 - 8th weekend. 1,855 screens.
Cumulative gross is at $409.1 domestically which is great but not spectacular for Marvel since it doesn't even land this film in the top ten for Marvel domestically with Captain Marvel edging it out for the 10th spot among their 28 films. There are two more Marvel films this year: Thor: Love and Thunder and Black Panther: Wakanda Forever so it will soon be only the 13th most successful Marvel film domestically. [Review]
7. THE BAD GUYS $439k. 10th weekend. 1,033 screens
Cumulative gross is now at $95.4. Universal has been trying to get it to $100 million domestic but it's not going to quite make it. Still a good gross for a non-franchise animated feature in this marketplace.
And that's it for wide releases. As we've mentioned before the studios just aren't putting enough films out for a healthy marketplace. In this same weekend in 2019 there were 14 films in wide release... so double this amount. That despite the ample evidence that the audience is going back to the movies; Four films grossed over $20 million in this single non-holiday weekend.
PLATFORM RELEASE SAMPLE (Under 800 Screens)
• JUG JUGG JEEYO $725k - 318 Screens
Bollywood films typically open big but stay in theaters for only the blink of an eye, their intended audiences usually turning out for one week only runs. Either that or they don't report their grosses after the first week because they're always little-big blips on the box office charts. This one is a Hindi family dramedy starring Anil Kapoor and Varun Dhawan.
• MARCEL THE SHELL WITH SHOES ON $169k - 6 screens
A24 nabbed the best per screen average of the weekend for the debut of this film based on the viral animated short from 2010.
• PHANTOM OF THE OPEN $144k - 4th weekend.
Sony Pictures Classics tried a major expansion this weekend for the true story sports comedy starring Mark Rylance and Sally Hawkins, adding 404 screens but it didn't pay off with a sad $287 per screen.
• OFFICIAL COMPETITION $50k - 2nd weekend. 26 screens
IFC Films expanded this one by 22 screens this weekend for a solid per screen average. The very funny showbiz satire has grossed $92k in US release thus far. [Review / Best performances of the year thus far]
Did you go to the movies this weekend? We had a ball at Elvis on Friday night.
The “Suspicious Minds” setpiece in #ELViS is just incredible. So worth seeing on a huge Dolby screen with a packed house
— Nathaniel Rogers ☮️ (@nathanielr) June 25, 2022
Reader Comments (5)
My husband insisted on seeing Top Gun for our anniversary on Friday, so I just bought tickets to see Elvis with my nine-year-old tomorrow. 😂
I liked Elvis and wished it were even more unhinged. Mostly everything up to the Vegas residency worked for me. I was fascinated by how Luhrmann distanced Elvis and rarely made him a POV character. There are so few dialogue driven scenes in that stretch - it was just kaleidoscopic wonder and excess. A complete blast! He seemed interested in Elvis iconography transforming pop culture and not in somehow explaining him as a person.
The last third felt much more like a traditional (and cliche) biopic. Austin Butler's performance (always charismatic) probably had the most depth here, but everything felt too familiar. Still, this is probably the best Baz Luhrmann has been since Moulin Rouge!.
I did thanks for asking. Saw
- THE FORGER, the lats of the German Film Festival for me. Not bad but something (I haven't quite put my finger on it yet) in the narrative style was jarring.
- FATHER STU. JOE BELL was amongst my "Best Of 2021" list and here's another Wahlberg real-minor-person-from-ordinary-America film that was better than I expected it to be.
I'm very pleasantly surprised it's such a hit, since it hasn't seemed like audiences would turn up for anything unrelated to superheroes - so this is a positive sign.
Didn't make it out to the cinema, but crossed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes off my bucket list.
I'm very pleasantly surprised it's such a hit, since it hasn't seemed like audiences would turn up for anything unrelated to superheroes - so this is a positive sign.
Didn't make it out to the cinema, but crossed Gentlemen Prefer Blondes off my bucket list.