“Godzilla: King of the Monsters” should smash at least $50 million at the North American box office during its May 31-June 2 opening weekend for Legendary and Warner Bros., early tracking showed on Thursday.
The Elton John biopic “Rocketman,” world premiering next week at the Cannes Film Festival, is pegged by box office trackers to launch in the $20 million to $22 million range for Paramount.
“King of the Monsters” is the third film in the MonsterVerse movie series, following 2014’s “Godzilla,” which opened with $93.2 million, and 2017’s “Kong: Skull Island,” with $61 million. The “Godzilla” sequel is directed by Michael Dougherty, and stars Kyle Chandler, Vera Farmiga, Millie Bobby Brown, Bradley Whitford, Sally Hawkins, Charles Dance, Thomas Middleditch and Ken Watanabe.
Taron Egerton toplines as John in “Rocketman,” with Paramount Pictures distributing worldwide. It’s directed by Dexter Fletcher, who previously took the reins on the Freddie Mercury biopic “Bohemian Rhapsody” after director Bryan Singer was fired.
The movie, written by Lee Hall, follows John’s emergence as a prodigy at the Royal Academy of Music to become a superstar. John broke out in 1972 with the album “Honky Chateau” and scored a blockbuster with the 1973 album “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road,” which topped the charts for two months in the U.S. and U.K.