Top Gun: Maverick goes higher further faster, Crimes of the Future are left unreported, it’s a Limited Release jamboree, and Other Box Office News.
More frequent readers of these Box Office Reports are likely aware of how the sophomore weekend following a big old blockbuster typically goes. The other big studios correctly recognise that there’s zero point trying to release real competition since general “one film every few months” audiences already blew their available wad the previous weekend, and so stay clear. The mega-performing blockbuster sinks anywhere between 55% and 70% because that’s just naturally what happens to any film which opens over $100 million. And in general, I get a pretty easy week of it by just talking nonsense to fill the time which really helps when, say, I’m in the middle of doing 5 gigs in 7 days and needing to jump around the country with precious little free time available for my work commitments.
Turns out, however, that neither Tom Cruise nor Top Gun: Maverick are your typical blockbuster. After blowing the roof off of various records last Memorial Day weekend, Maverick has cemented an iron grip on the #1 slot of yet another record with the most impressive second-weekend hold for a $100+ mil-opener that I have seen in my near-decade of doing this series in its various forms. A second weekend of almost $86 million, a drop of just 32% from last week’s three-day.
Bruce Nash at The Numbers took the liberty of going over all the sophomore weekends of Memorial Day debuts from the last 25 years and found that the only film which came close to Maverick’s hold was Bruce Almighty back in 2003 with a 45% drop, and that film only posted a $67.9 million opening weekend! When taking out Maverick’s Thursday night previews from last week, and adjusting totals accordingly to $107.4 mil, that drop recedes to a mere 20% from opening weekend. Whilst one should never underestimate the public’s adoration for dinosaurs – as I have repeatedly mentioned in these articles “People. Fucking. Love. Dinosaurs.” – I think we could be seeing an interesting scrap when Jurassic World: Dominion stomps into cinemas next weekend.
READ MORE: Demonia (1990) – Blu-ray Review
In the meantime, America’s indie studio stalwarts came together to bugger my workload up by dropping all of their major Limited and Moderate releases in this one tiny gap before the dino and Disney monsters roar into town. So, let’s shotgun these real quick, starting with the Moderate releases. It was a great weekend for film sickos the nation over as David Cronenberg returned to multiplexes with a properly divisive body horror joint in Crimes of the Future. Unfortunately, he sold the rights to noted buzzy indie releases bunglers NEON and so the film barely managed to scrape its way into the weekend’s Top 10; $1.1 million from 773 screens, a PTA of $1,423.
Closely following behind were the silver medallists in bungling buzzy bricks IFC Films with their own alternative horror flick, Watcher. Somehow, that received even less advance notice in hyped release plans than Crimes but wasn’t too far off upsetting the more notorious film; eleventh with $815,000 from 764 screens, a PTA of $1,066. Bronze medallists in this particular field Roadside Attractions brought out their best half/no-assed effort in the shape of Terrence Davies’ acclaimed Siegfried Sassoon biopic Benediction and, in that contest, did the best out of the lot in that it bombed horrendously; $49,776 from 91 screens, a woeful PTA of $546. So, in that respect, maybe Roadside are actually gold medal winners? I didn’t think too hard about this analogy.
READ MORE: Doctor Who: Origins #1 – Comic Review
But we do have one bright spot in the new release field! In actual Limited release, Craig Roberts’ proudly cheesy and wholesome The Phantom of the Open charmed the pants off of a solid percentage of audiences, making off with $26,189 from 6 screens (a respectable PTA of $4,364) in the process. Did I need to single this news out when we’re running long as is? Arguably, no, but I like to try and end the prose part of these pieces on some positivity nowadays to contrast the unchecked slow-motion misery going on outside.
Speaking of misery turning into positivity: for a brief moment we appeared to have memed much too close to the sun and, in our irony larks, successfully sent Morbius back into 1,000 theatres this weekend. Sony operated under the belief that everyone was laughing with them rather than at them only to far too late realise literally nobody was saying “it’s Morbin’ time” sincerely. Long story short, Morbius bombed yet again, making just $85,000 on Friday. Nipped that in the bud just in time, well done all.
Let’s Morb this Full List.
US Box Office Results: Friday 3rd June 2022 – Sunday 5th June 2022
$85,999,989 / $291,604,000
I adore the specificity of that number. For some reason, being exactly $11 off of an $86 million weekend just pleases me. Not in a “celebrating misfortune of films I don’t care about” way, either. I like the quirk of that minor deficit.
2] Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness
$9,251,000 / $388,711,116
Admittedly, I’ve not been keeping up with MCU -> D+ protocol precedent, but Multiverse going to Disney+ in barely three weeks’ time is wild to me. That’s not even two months in cinemas! You’re still selling tickets! I dunno, just seems fast to me. I’m used to movies going to cinemas, running for four weeks at most, then disappearing into a vault for five months until the DVD comes out; maybe I’m just old.
3] The Bob’s Burgers Movie
$4,500,000 / $22,240,149
Do you like Bob’s Burgers? Then, congratulations! You’ll love The Bob’s Burgers Movie cos it’s just 100 minutes of Bob’s Burgers! Do you not like Bob’s Burgers? Then, commiserations! There’s nothing for you here and also you may be dead inside/incapable of feeling of joy!
4] The Bad Guys
$3,339,675 / $87,291,000
It’s gonna be hard to live up to Do America, but at least the trailer for the new Beavis and Butt-Head movie has enough solid dumb chuckles to give me hope that the full film will be some fun.
5] Downton Abbey: A New Era
$2,999,710 / $35,702,000
To our non-UK readers, yes that Bloodborne-referencing tweet you saw going around was exactly what it felt like to be in the country during Jubilee weekend. God, I hate it here. But speaking of Bloodborne, Amy Walker’s taken a look through at some graphic novel spin-offs from the beloved game.
6] Everything Everywhere All at Once
$2,020,892 / $60,561,935
Managed to squeeze my rewatch in this past weekend. Hopefully it hangs around at cinemas even longer so I can get another two or three in before time expires. I just love this movie so much.
7] Vikram
$1,770,000 / NEW
Eamon Hennedy’s ongoing Music in the Movies series is wrapping up soon, but he’s going out with a bang! “Bang” here meaning “covering films we really should’ve reviewed at the time, honestly.” This time he looked at Judy, the movie which I keep forgetting won Best Actress at that year’s Oscars because nobody nominated Lupita Nyong’o in Us the FUCKING COWARDS.
$1,724,877 / $188,269,000
Fairly certain I don’t need to play Sonic Forces now; I can successfully blag my way through accurately describing the story in a quiz situation, thanks Jehtt!
9] The Lost City
$1,379,851 / $104,012,000
Happy Pride month, everybody! To celebrate, Amy Walker’s put together a list of five major queer characters in DC’s current comics slate worth keeping an eye on! And maybe more than just an eye, AMIRIGHT? …am I right? I’m asexual, so I don’t actually know if that’s a working innuendo/entendre or not.
10] Crimes of the Future
$1,100,000 / NEW
Feel like Kristen Stewart is incapable of not serving outstanding looks on a red carpet, at this point. It’s frankly a bit unfair. Save some cool confident hotness for the rest of us!
Dropped out: Men, F3: Fun and Frustration