Saturday AM Update: Paramount/Skydance’s Top Gun: Maverick held throughout the week, and it’s holding at a brilliant steady in weekend 2. I’m hearing that its -33% ease is one of the best for a wide release that’s opened to north of $100M, ahead of the -40% posted by Star Wars: The Force Awakens in December 2015, and tied with 2004’s Shrek 2  (-33%).

Top Gun 2 is looking at $84.5M, which will put it at $290M EOD Sunday; easily the best Tom Cruise has ever seen at the domestic box office. The Joseph Kosinski-directed movie cashed in a second Friday at $25M, $5M ahead of where we saw it yesterday afternoon.

EntTelligence reports 1.8M moviegoers came out to see Top Gun 2 in its second Friday, taking its running admissions count to north of 17M. The average ticket price for the movie has dipped from $12.68 to $12.55.

The sequel is playing broadly: In weekend 2 PostTrak exits, Top Gun 2 is seeing 38% over 45, with the 25-34 crowd delivering the best attendance yesterday at 23%, and 35-44 at 20%. Still a marvelous audience response here at five stars and a 74% definite recommend. Men over 25 were big yesterday at 41% (97% grade), then women over 25 at 39% (96% grade), with men and women under 25 at 10% (respectively 93% and 82% grades).

Top Gun 2 is leading all titles during the 22nd weekend of the year to an overall estimated haul of $117.8M, which is -32% from the same pre-pandemic weekend in 2019. How do we continue to be off in a marketplace where there’s a big movie leading the charge? Same old answers: It boils down to the lack of product, and how studios are continuing to be cautious. During the May 31-June 2, post-Memorial Day weekend there were three new studio titles appealing to a variety of demos: Godzilla: King of the Monsters (which was No. 1 with $47.8M), Rocketman with $25.7M, and horror movie Ma with $18M.

Then there was weekend 2 of Aladdin in the No. 2 spot, with $42.8M. For the rest of the summer, studios seem to be bobbing and weaving around major blockbusters on the calendar, i.e., no one is going wide against Jurassic World Dominion on June 10, Lightyear on June 17, Minions: The Rise of Gru on July 1, or Thor: Love and Thunder on July 8.

That type of booking by the majors signifies their current belief that it’s a one picture per weekend marketplace. They’re even practicing that distribution method into August with smaller movies, and that’s a time when more can feasibly be booked on the calendar. What’s optimistic is that just because summer ends, that doesn’t mean people stop going to the movies, as evident in last October. But we need product. Hopefully the turnaround in older demos here by Top Gun: Maverick will provide others with confidence to put more on the schedule, because there’s plenty of opportunity out there.

Other great things occurring at the box office sans any major studio wide entries: A24’s Everything Everywhere All at Once is crossing $60M this weekend with an estimated $1.9M. When will the Daniels’ movie quit? Not yet.

The other prolific opening of the weekend is NEON’s moderate (Comscore had it originally listed on the calendar as wide) release of David Cronenberg’s kinky dystopian surgery movie Crimes of the Future, which is eyeing $1.17M in tenth place at 773 locations in 146 markets, or a $1,5K theater average.

The pic scored a six minute standing ovation at its Cannes Film Festival world premiere. It’s Cronenberg’s first movie since 2014’s Maps to the Stars. A 78% fresh rating from critics on Rotten Tomatoes and a divided result from those who bought tickets at 51%. I hear that the movie did OK in big cities on the coasts and Canada, but the further you got away from those markets, the more ticket sales became smaller.

No surprise, as Cronenberg has a cult appeal. His biggest opening at the box office belongs to one of few major studio distributed movies on his resume, that being 20th Century Fox’s The Fly, which opened to $7M and legged out to $40.4M in late summer 1986. After that, the filmmaker’s second-biggest opening at the box office was his 1983 Stephen King feature adaptation of The Dead Zone, with $4.55M; and these were major studio titles back in their heyday.

Here’s what’s interesting, and again, granted, it’s pretty small. But when you get into Cronenberg’s core, die-hard, gritty genre titles at the domestic box office, the opening here for Crimes of the Future ranks behind 1988’s Dead Ringers ($3M opening at 1,042 theaters; which Crimes of the Future arguably plays as a call-and-echo piece to) and 1983’s Videodrome ($1.19M at 600 theaters). So by Cronenberg’s own slide rule, Crimes of the Future is par for the course.

Social media corp RelishMix observed, “Neon took a simple approach for Crimes of the Future on social, with materials predominately built onto channels for the studio, with YouTube views at 4M+ views for owned-and-earned videos for the three trailer/spots — plus there are seven Facebook videos in place as the film platforms out from the Cannes premiere.”

Among the Cronenberg devotees on social, RelishMix reports, “Chatter runs positive, as horror fans are definitely drawn to see the latest psychological mind-and body-bender by the horror maestro, ‘I love that even a 79-year-old Cronenberg can still shake up the squares better than anyone else.’ — and the cast with Viggo Mortensen’s very selective roles and Kristen Stewart fanatics, too.”

As major studios leave gaps at the box office in their bookings, Indian cinema is taking advantage of those auditoriums. Lokesh Kanagaraj’s Vikram centers around Amar, a policeman who is deployed for secret assignments. He’s been sent to get a gang of masked men who might be responsible for a series of serial killings. However, Amar himself might not be all that he’s cracked up to be. 131 markets with prints in Hindi, Telugu, and Tamil are seeing good numbers in NYC, LA, Dallas, San Francisco, Boston, DC, Atlanta and Detroit. Estimated outlook is $2.1M.

1.) Top Gun: Maverick (Par) 4,751 (+16) theaters, Fri $25M (-52%), 3-day $84.5M (-33%), Total $290.1M/Wk 2

2.) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Dis) 3,765 (-40) theaters, Fri $2.6M (-43%), 3-day $8.8M (-45%)/Total $388.2M/Wk 5

3.) Bob’s Burgers Movie (20th/Dis) 3,425 theaters, Fri $1.3M (-76%) 3-Day $4.78M (-61%), Total $22.5M/Wk 2

4.) The Bad Guys (Uni) 2,869 (-75) theaters, Fri $930K (-26%), 3-day $3.33M (-24%), Total $87.2M/Wk 7

5.) Downton Abbey- A New Era (Foc) 3,451 (-379) theaters, Fri $970K (-47%), 3-day $3M (-48%), Total $35.7M/Wk 3

6.) Vikram (Ind) 465 theaters, Fri $875K, 3-day $2.1M/Wk 1

7.) Everything Everywhere All at Once (A24) 1,434 (+247) theaters, Fri $567K (-18%), 3-day $1.9M (-21%), Total $60.4M/Wk 11

8.) Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (Par) 2,092 (-237) theaters Fri $435K (-34%), 3-day $1.53M (-37%), Total $188M/Wk 9

9.) The Lost City (Par) 811 (-216) theaters, Fri $360K (-26%), 3-day $1.31M (-37%), Total $103.9M/Wk 11

10.) Crimes of the Future (NEON) 773 theaters, Fri $490K, 3-day $1.17M/Wk 1

Friday Midday Update: Moviegoers aren’t losing that loving feeling for Top Gun: Maverick this weekend as the movie is destined to become Tom Cruise’s top-grossing movie ever at the domestic box office with $273.6M. The 3x Oscar nominee’s previous high earning title was Steven Spielberg’s 2005 sci-fi title War of the Worlds at $234M.

Top Gun 2 is expected to beat War of the Worlds on Saturday; the Joseph Kosinski-directed sequel eyeing a second Friday of $20M, -61% against last Friday (+ previews) on its way to a 3-day of $68M, -46%. Some rival studios see it much higher, but again, it’s still early.

Top Gun 2 ended its first week with $205.6M. This weekend, the Paramount/Skydance movie will fly over such Cruise lifetime stateside totals as Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol ($209M), Mission: Impossible II ($215M), and Mission: Impossible – Fallout ($220M, the highest grossing title at domestic B.O. in that franchise).

Here’s how the rest of the weekend is looking per industry estimates:

1.) Top Gun: Maverick (Par) 4,751 (+16) theaters, Fri $20M (-61%), 3-day $68M (-46%), Total $273.6M/Wk 2

2.) Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (Dis) 3,765 (-40) theaters, Fri $2M (-55%), 3-day $6.5M (-59%)/Total $385.9M/Wk 5

3.) Bob’s Burgers Movie (20th/Dis) 3,425 theaters, Fri $1.1M (-80%) 3-Day $4M-$5M (-64%), Total $22.2M+/Wk 2

4.) The Bad Guys (Uni) 2,869 (-75) theaters, Fri $850K (-32%), 3-day $3.1M (-29%), Total $87M/Wk 7

5.) Downton Abbey- A New Era (Foc) 3,451 (-379) theaters, Fri $850K (-54%), 3-day $2.6M (-55%), Total $35.3M/Wk 3