Godzilla: King of the Monsters ruled its opening weekend, but the Godzilla sequel didn't roar so much as politely squeeze by last week's winner Aladdin to claim the #1 spot. With roughly $49 million, King of the Monsters had the softest opening yet for the MonsterVerse -- but, hey, at least it topped the May 31-June 2 box office! Rocketman made close to half that amount, but it's a very different film, and for the Elton John biopic $25 million is a win. Fellow newcomer Ma had to settle for fourth place behind Rocketman, but that horror film's take was a win too.
Check out how all three newcomers did vs. the returning movies in the domestic box office chart, then we'll talk about everything below.
I wouldn't say this is a bad result for Godzilla: King of the Monsters, it just pales in comparison to previous MonsterVerse titles and also the revised expectations. The movie was initially projected to open between $40-$60 million at the domestic (U.S./Canada) box office, and that's what happened. But more recent revised predictions thought it would skew higher, well above $50 million.
In comparison, Godzilla made a massive $93,188,384 in its opening weekend in May 2014. The prequel Kong: Skull Island made $61,025,472 in its domestic opening in March 2017. There's another movie coming as a sequel to King of the Monsters, Godzilla vs. Kong, with that MonsterVerse title scheduled to be released on March 13, 2020.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters had bad reviews from critics -- with a score of just 37% on Rotten Tomatoes -- but a big thumbs-up from fans. The movie has an impressive 87% RT Audience Score and a CinemaScore of B+ from polled moviegoers. That's not the first huge critic-to-fan disparity this year, but it's quite a gap.
Aladdin also has a big critic-to-fan gap, with fans rating the live-action movie very highly and the critics just feeling meh about it. Aladdin almost scraped itself a second weekend victory, which would've been quite an upset. Instead, it had a respectable drop of 53.7% from last week.
Rocketman should feel just fine about that $25 million, which is actually a bit more than the initial $20 million projections. The Taron Egerton movie is enjoying praise from both critics and audiences. Octavia Spencer's horror film Ma has had a more mixed reaction, but if the production budget was only $5 million, then that $18 million is already a win.
And lookie what we have here with Booksmart and Brightburn. They reversed positions from last week, with Booksmart getting a mini boost of 13 more theaters, which helped it just enough to push past the superhero horror film.
Check out the full chart listings from Box Office Mojo, and prepare for a battle next week between Dark Phoenix and The Secret Life of Pets 2, with Late Night in there as some counter-programming. Oh, and by the way, Avengers: Endgame is now up to $2,713,201,784 worldwide. Yes, I am sticking to my guns that it will top Avatar.
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