Looking positive for Elvis & the black phone25 Jun 2022 18:05
Baz Luhrmann’s Elvis topped the domestic box office on Friday with a solid $12.7 million. That includes $3.7 million in Thursday (and week-of) previews. If the film plays over the weekend like Dexter Fletcher’s Rocketman (which opened with $25.7 million from a $9.17 million Friday in June of 2019), then the $85 million rock biopic earns an impressive $35 million in its Fri-Sun debut. That may be optimistic since the Paramount-released, crowd-pleasing Elton John flick was R-rated. However, Taron Egerton’s Rocketman was also an hour shorter than Warner Bros. Discovery’s Austin Butler and Tom Hanks-starring 160-minute epic. With strong reviews and solid buzz, I’d expect the Austin Butler/Tom Hanks flick with around $30 million and duking it out with Top Gun: Maverick for the weekend crown.
One year ago, we were all mourning the $11.8 million opening weekend of In the Heights (and celebrating the $70 million opening of F9), so I’d count $30 million-plus for a 2.75-hour, adult-skewing musical drama as a relative win. Yes, Elvis Presley is a “marquee character,” as was Freddie Mercury for Bohemian Rhapsody and Lady Gaga as a fictionalized version of Lady Gaga in A Star Is Born. In pre-Covid days, live-action musicals (including musically centric biopics like Straight Outta Brooklyn) were among the safer theatrical sub-genres. We had a ton of musicals last year and almost all of them (West Side Story, Respect, Dear Evan Hanson, etc.) died badly. Elvis’ solid debut feels like another progression toward relative “business as usual” normality.
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