Weekend projections: Maverick and Elvis tied at the top

June 26, 2022

Elvis

Two American icons are tied at the top of the box office this weekend, with Elvis and Tom Cruise’s Top Gun: Maverick both headed for a weekend around $30.5 million. Technically, Maverick leads according to the studios’ official projections, but that’s simply down to how they report the numbers on Sunday morning (and how we interpret what they report). We won’t know who has come out on top until official numbers are released on Monday.

Here’s how the domestic numbers look as of Sunday (click on the image for the full chart of films reporting so far)…



Maverick’s rise back to the top of the chart continues a remarkable run that has taken it past $500 million this weekend. It’s down 32% this time around, which is roughly where it has been throughout its run. If it can keep that up for a bit longer, it’ll easily top $600 million.

Elvis will give Baz Luhrmann his second-best opening weekend behind The Great Gatsby’s $50.1 million. Like every film in the top six it is coming in below our model’s Friday-morning prediction, but not by a huge margin. Its A- CinemaScore and 93% Rotten Tomatoes audience score are excellent (particularly compared to a mixed reception from critics), and suggest it too could have a good run. $100 million remains a possibility domestically.

Jurassic World: Dominion will decline a steep 55% in its third weekend, landing it in third place. Our model thought it was favorite to top the chart, but clearly it’s running out of steam as the competition hots up at the box office. Elvis’s debut on 718 Premium Large Format screens undoubtedly took a chunk out of its earnings.

The biggest disappointment this weekend is without question the second weekend of Lightyear, which finds itself falling 65% to $17.7 million in its second outing. That would be par for the course for most movies but it’s a horrible result for a Pixar production, particularly in light of its relative soft opening. Its decline will mean that we won’t have a very rare weekend with five films topping $20 million.

Nestled between Jurassic World and Lightyear is fourth-placed The Black Phone, which will earn a projected $23.37 million in its first weekend. Our model thought something like $17 million would be a par score for the film, so this is an excellent first outing.

Overall, the top 10 will be down 19% from last weekend, in spite of two strong new entries. The under-performance of most films compared to Friday’s prediction is probably a result of competition between them, so overall numbers look healthy as we head towards the July 4 weekend. A good start by Minions: The Rise of Gru would give us a shot at $200 million next weekend, although we might need to include the holiday Monday’s numbers to get us over that particular line.

- Studio weekend projections
- All-time biggest weekends - All-time top-grossing movies in North America
- All-time top-grossing movies worldwide

Bruce Nash,

Filed under: Tom Cruise, Baz Luhrmann