According To The variety On today’s episode of “Daily Variety” podcast, Variety’s Rebecca Rubin explains why Sony Pictures’ family film “G.O.A.T” topped the box office and how Elvis in Imax can still pack ‘em in. And TV critic Aramide Tinubu discusses some of the overlooked gems on her list of the best Black-led TV series of the past 10 years. “GOAT” and “Wuthering Heights” were in a foot race for the No. 1 spot for most of the weekend but the animated pic from Sony Pictures and Steph Curry’s Unanimous Media pulled ahead in the end to lead the box office in its second weekend with about $17 million compared to about $14 million for the Warner Bros. romancer. “The fact that ‘GOAT,’ which is an original animated movie — the kind of film that has been struggling since the pandemic, rose to No. 1 is just a testament to the fact that family audiences are really, really hungry for new films,” Rubin says. The frame saw four new titles enter in limited releases. The standouts were “I Can Only Imagine 2,” a faith-based film distributed by Lionsgate, and Neon’s “EPiC: Elvis Presley in Concert,” a concert film assembled by Baz Luhrmann, director of 2022’s “Elvis.”
“The biggest of this weekend’s new releases was the faith based film ‘I Can Only Imagine 2,’ which is from Lionsgate. It made $8 million in its opening weekend, and that’s pretty far behind its predecessor, which was 2018’s ‘I Can Only Imagine.’ That film opened to $17 million, which was a huge result for a film of this size and scale,” Rubin says. “I don’t think [the sequel] will be quite the breakout success of the first film, which ended up making $86 million worldwide. But it should probably be a tidy little win for Lionsgate.”
“EPiC,” meanwhile, grabbed $3.2 million from only 325 Imax screens. “It’s the only film that managed to crack the top 10 that’s playing on less than 1,000 screens, and it’s gotten really rapturous reviews from critics,” Rubin says.
Tinubu details her look back at the last 10 years of Black-led TV shows at a time when many critically beloved series have faced the ax amid Hollywood’s larger contraction of original content.
“It was important to me to have a spectrum of shows. So there are, of course, slavery-set and antebellum-set series, but there’s also modern day series like ‘Queenie’ that are set in the U.K., and ‘Damascus,’ which is set in sort of an alternative universe. Something like Boots Riley’s ‘I’m a Virgo’ is set in an alternative universe that’s kind of like our world, but not quite our world,” Tinubu says. “I just wanted to to get people talking about these series. For me, representation has always been so important and why I got into this business. And I know for a lot of Black people and people of color, representation continues to be extremely important, especially in this landscape.”
