Friday Box Office: ‘Elvis’ Tops With $13 Million, ‘Black Phone’ Grabs $10 Million

Elvis took the top spot at the domestic box office on Friday. The Thursday and week-of previews are included. If the film plays over the weekend like Rocketman, which opened with $25.7 million from a $9.17 million Friday in June of 2019, then it will earn an impressive $35 million in its Fri-Sun debut. Since the movie was R-rated, that could be positive. Taron Egerton's film was an hour shorter than Warner Bros. Discovery's film. With strong reviews and solid buzz, I think the Austin Butler/Tom Hanks movie will make around $30 million and win the weekend crown.

We were all mourning the $11.8 million opening weekend of In the Heights, so I would count $30 million-plus for a 2.75-hour, adult-skewing musical drama as a relative victory. Freddie Mercury and Lady Gaga are both gay characters in A Star Is Born. Straight Outta Brooklyn is one of the better live-action musicals of the pre- Covid days. Almost all of the musicals that we had last year died badly. The debut of Elvis feels like a progression towards normal life.

It is another example of Warner Bros. turning a less-conventional movie into a big-deal hit. It was a last-minute shot in the arm that the second trailer played for most older, irregular movie goers. The bad reviews made it seem like a must-see hallucinogenic acid trip. Tom Hanks offered a deeply against-type turn as a real-life American villain and Austin Butler rode a wave of positive media. Hanks didn't try to make ColonelParker anything other than a criminal.

It is a big-budget biographical film about one of the most famous American artists of the last century with a marquee director, good reviews and enough star power in Hanks and Elvis himself to bring in the crowds. It was ten years ago that Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike opened with over 40 million dollars. Ted was the top-grossing movie of the year and was written and directed by MacFarlane and Wahlberg. The film opened with $54 million and went on to make $218 million domestically and $549 million worldwide. The optimism is laughable now that Prometheus has been added to the mix.

The weekend was a big one for Universal. The Black Phone opened with over 10 million dollars. The 70’s set chiller, about a kidnapped boy who gets unlikely help from the killer's previous victims, was supposed to open in 2020. The film was kept until late June due to strong reviews and festival buzz. It looks like that has worked out. Happy Death Day will get to $21.2 million if it plays over the weekend. It will make $27.8 million for the Fri-Sun frame if it legs out. Divide the difference by $25 million.

The reviews and word-of-mouth, along with the Blumhouse brand name, and themarquee value of Scott Derrickson, who helmed Doctor Strange, Sinister and The Exorcism of Emily Rose, are all credit to the reviews and word-of-mouth. It is the kind of fantasy that distracts from reality. I would expect decent legs since The Black Phone is an adult-skewing movie and Elvis is a franchise movie. A lot of people bought concessions and went into the movie theater last night. If studios release movies in theaters, people will go to those theaters to watch them.

It was launched into six theaters by A 24. The charming and poignant feature-film adaptation of Dean Fleischer-Camp and Jenny Slate's YouTube short-film series earned $79,396 on Friday and is expected to make $191,000 on the weekend. The average for a live-action/animated coming-of-age family movie is over $30,000 per theater. On July 15 it goes wide and is very good. I am curious as to if it gets a Cinemascore grade when it goes wide, if only for the comic value of this genuine crowdpleaser getting like an A and "clashing" with A 24's usual brand.