Soundtracking: Rocketman

by Chris Feil

Rocketman is just about the jukeboxiest musical that ever jukeboxed, arriving on the screen with a structure more indebted to that of the stage than the kind of musical biopic (namely Bohemian Rhapsody) some might have expected. It’s as if Elton John’s and his Billy Elliot collaborator Lee Hall had shifted gears mid-conception, opting for a film with what had originally been planned for the stage. Safe bets will be on Rocketman coming to Broadway eventually anyway.

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Weak Sequels & Promising Platform Titles

Weekend Box Office Estimates June 7th-9th (ESTIMATES) 🔺 = New or Expanding / ★ = Recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / SPECIALTY TITLES
Secret Life of Pets 2	Last Black Man in San Francisco
1 🔺 Secret Life of Pets 2  $47.1 on 4561 screens *NEW*  REVIEW	1🔺 Biggest Little Farm $347k on 285 screens (cum. $2.4)
2 🔺 Dark Phoenix $33 on 3721 screens *NEW*  REVIEW	2 🔺 Late Night $249k on 4 screens *NEW* REVIEW ★
3  Aladdin  $24.5 on 3805 screens (cum. $232.3) 1992 RETROSPECTIVE	3 🔺  All is True $237k on 328 screens (cum. $752k) POSTERIZED: DAME JUDI
4 Godzilla: King of Monsters  $15.5 on 4108  screens (cum. $78.5) POSTERIZED	4 🔺  Last Black Man in...  $230k on 7 screens *NEW*  REVIEW ★
5 Rocketman $14 on 3610 screens (cum. $50.4) REVIEW ★	5 🔺 Echo in Canyon $205k on 43 screens (cum. $501k)
6 Ma $7.8 on 2816 screens (cum. $32.7) REVIEW	6 🔺 The Souvenir $169k on 145 screens (cum. $696k) REVIEW ★

What did you see this week? 

• Secret Life of Pets 2 and Dark Phoenix both had dismal openings when compared to their predecessors. Dark Phoenix is likely to become the first X-film not to gross $100 million domestically. But that's okay, since Disney acquired Fox and this franchise can now go dormant until the MCU has their way with it. (We don't really understand why Disney is still going to dump money into The New Mutants reshoot. Just release it on Disney+ and be done with the bad Fox X-Men titles!) 

• Late Night had the weekend's best per screen average with $62k per theater and will go nationwide next weekend. The Last Black Man in San Francisco, also had a solid opening and the film will hopefully be able to capitalize on its strong reviews as it expands during the summer as counterprogramming for adult audiences. Late Night is hoping for a bigger box office splash than Booksmart and we assume they'll get it with more recognizable stars headlining. 

• Other limited openings this week lower on the charts were the music doc Pavarotti (with $142k), stripper doc This One's for the Ladies ($16k), and the Matt Bomer starring Papi Chulo with $7k from 2 theaters. 

• Rocketman crossed $50 million dollar in its 2nd weekend, holding the best of last week's wide releases down only 45% from its opening weekend (by contrast Ma was down 56% and Godzilla a steep drop of 67%) 

ENJOY THE TONY AWARDS AND BIG LITTLE LIES TONIGHT. WE'LL HAVE COVERAGE OF BOTH ON MONDAY AND TUESDAY.

Podcast: Booksmart, Ma, Diamantino, and Rocketman

by Murtada Elfadl and Nathaniel R

 

Index (53 minutes)
00:01 Drama Desk Awards (plus Tony buzz)
10:00 Rocketman w/ Taron Egerton, Jamie Bell, Bryce Dallas Howard
25:40 Olivia Wilde's Booksmart w/ Kaitlyn Dever & Beanie Feldstein
34:00 The thoroughly bizarre Diamantino
39:10 Octavia Spencer in the horror flick Ma (plus Missi Pyle!)
48:00 Randomness: summer movies, Nathaniel's bday, upcoming Smackdowns

Mentioned (Extra Credit Reading!)
• Rocketman vs Bohemian Rhapsody Vulture Quiz
• New Yorker Ma Essay by Doreen St. Félix
• TFE Nathaniel's Review of Rocketman
• TFE Murtada's interview with the Diamantino directors 

You can listen to the podcast here at the bottom of the post or download from iTunes. Continue the conversations in the comments, won't you? 

Rocketman, Ma, Booksmart

Finally, some options at the movie theater!

What did you see over the weekend? I saw four movies - a fun weekend. FINALLY. It's always better when multiple options of quality arrive instead of every distributor clearing the way for some preordained lame Disney blockbuster.

The charts and a few notes are after the jump...

Weekend Box Office May 31st-June 2nd  🔺 = new or expanded theater counts / ★ = recommended
W I D E	PLATFORM / LIMITED
1 🔺 Godzilla: King of the Monsters $47.7 on 4108 screens *new*	1 🔺 Biggest Little Farm $435k on 275 screens (cum. $1.8)

2 Aladdin $42.8 on 4476 screens (cum. $185.5) 1992 RETRO	2 🔺  The Souvenir $133k on 74 screens (cum. $460k)  REVIEW, PODCAST ★

3 🔺 Rocketman  $25.7 on 3610 screens *new*  REVIEW ★	3 The White Crow $125k on 212 screens (cum. $1.5) PODCAST

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Review: "Rocketman" blasts off

This review was originally published in Nathaniel's column at Towleroad

Pop stardom is a notoriously fickle thing. For every “legacy” artist out there, there are thousands of one-hit wonders, and hundreds of sort-of famous B listers. One imagines that anyone in the center of the hurricane of New Fame imagines it will last forever. If you find yourself engineering your own biopic in your golden years, congratulations, it did. Which brings us to Reginald Dwight… better known as Elton John.

In the first frames of Rocketman, Elton John (Taron Egerton) strolls into focus, cheekily dressed as a horned devil to confront his own demons in a therapy session framing device...

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