Friday Box Office Analysis
By Kim Hollis
June 16, 2018
BoxOfficeProphets.com

JackJack is excited to fight the bad guy!

How much do people like The Incredibles. SO much.

A sequel 14(!) years in the making, the Pixar superhero family finally returned to theaters. Clearly, audiences were ready to see them, too. The total Friday box office take was $71.5 million, including $18.5 million from Thursday night previews. Holy Underminer, people! The "true" Friday total of $53.5 million is the same as previous animated opening weekend record holder Finding Dory. The Thursday box office is all icing on the top of a delicious, delicious cupcake.

Finding Dory had a debut weekend in 2016 of $135.1 million. The Incredibles 2 is pretty much going to blow that out of the water. Even if we allow for some front-loading, which is pretty likely given the pent-up demand, The Incredibles 2 would still finish with $165 million or so. Ultimately, given the excellent reviews and A+ Cinemascore, I think that it will pull that number up to $175 million. I won't be surprised if it's $180 million, but Disney is generally very conservative with their estimates compared to other studios.

By the way, the A+ Cinemascore is deserved. Go see The Incredibles 2 today.

Some other studios opened movies this weekend, which was cute of them. The best performer of those remainders was Tag, an odd-looking comedy featuring Jeremy Renner (who broke both his arms during filming), John Hamm, Ed Helms, and one of my faves, Jake Johnson. With mixed reviews (57 percent fresh at Rotten Tomatoes) and a B+ Cinemascore, it didn't have the raves that it needed to serve as, uh, counterprogramming for dudes? (Dudes will go see The Incredibles, by the way. It's an all-quadrants movie.)

Tag earned $5.4 million yesterday, including $1.3 million from its Thursday showings. Let's call it $13.1 million and an okay-ish start for the Warner Bros. movie. The budget was just $28 million, so it's going to be just fine in the long run, but nothing special.

Superfly didn't have a ton of studio support, though I'd seen a few ads for it here and there. Sony only distributed it on a little over 2,000 screens, and it managed $1.9 million yesterday. It actually debuted on Wednesday, so it has garnered a total of $4 million since that beginning. Trevor Jackson, the star of the film, is a rising young talent to watch. He was delightful on the Black-ish spinoff Grown-ish, and he has a budding musical career as well. Superfly should come away with $5.5 million for the weekend and around $7.5 million over its five days.