Sony's No Good Deeds was the top film on Friday, as the Idris Elba/Taraji P. Henson home invasion thriller earned a pretty terrific $8.8 million on its first day of release. The $13.5m thriller courted a bit of controversy this week when Sony decided at the last minute to pull all scheduled press screenings, citing their desire to keep secret a climactic plot twist. The critics did get their hands into the picture on Friday and as expected they were pretty brutal. Did Sony merely decide to not screen the film for critics because they knew it was a critic-proof movie anyway (they went through a period in early 2006 where they released a bunch of movies sans-press screenings to relative box office success)? Or did the scenes of Idris Elba stalking, beating, and (no spoilers) possibly killing women gave executives worry after the Ray Rice domestic violence situation? I'll leave you to speculate, but audiences didn't care and the end result is still a rock-solid debut weekend for the Will Packer-produced thriller.

Will Packer is having a pretty terrific year, having produced Ride Along and Think like a Man Too thus far this year. He thus-far only one project set for 2015, the Kevin Hart romantic comedy The Wedding Ringer (about a guy who provides "best men" to grooms with no male friends). No Good Deed is breaking out for the simplest of reasons: It's a straight-up genre picture that just happens to feature two very popular black actors in the lead roles. Idris Elba is one of the biggest heartthrobs around and Henson has a strong following as well. As I've said before and will say again, black audiences don't necessarily want every film aimed at them or starring actors of color to be brutally depressing dramas about the various outrages of and/or struggles against racism. Sometimes they too just want to watch a ridiculously good looking black man chase a damsel-in-distress around a location until she (I presume) kills him at the last minute. If you build it, they will come. And this weekend it looks like they came to the tune of around $25 million.

The next new release was Warner Bros. (Time Warner Inc.)'s kid-centric sequel A Dolphin Tale 2. The first Dolphin Tale opened three years ago this weekend with $19.1 million and had a leggy run that ended with $72.2m domestic and $95m worldwide on a $37m budget. The sequel, which like the original was produced by Alcon, cost about the same, with pretty much all of the original cast (Morgan Freeman, Ashley Judd, Winter the Dolphin, etc.) returning. As such, A Dolphin Tale opened last night with $4.262m, compared with the $5m earned by the first Dolphin Tale over its first Friday. If the multiplier is similar, and I see no reason why it shouldn't be (Are there that many die-hard Dolphin Tale fans that rushed out to see the sequel?), then Warner Bros. is looking at a $16m debut weekend.

I'm sure I'm supposed to tell you how sad it is that it won't open as high as the first film, but I won't. The original isn't exactly a family classic. There are no real "added value elements," no kid-friendly celebrity like Ariana Grande showing up as a darker and scarier villain who planned to get caught and makes the kids and adults question the moral simplicity of the first film ("Look out behind you, Harry Connick, Jr.! Noooooooo!") to make the sequel stand out. The fact that it will open pretty close to the original while costing the same counts as a win in my book. I'll be seeing this with the whole family on Sunday, despite not having seen the first one. If anyone wants to catch me up on what I'm sure is an incredibly complicated web of world-building established in the first Dolphin Tale, that's what the comments section is for.

There was a semi-wide new release as well, as Fox Searchlight debuted The Drop on 800 screens. The Dennis Lehane adaptation is notable for containing the last performance from the late James Gandolfini. The film cost Chernin Entertainment $10 million to produce and, I'm guessing from the almost non-existent marketing campaign, didn't cost too much more to advertise. As such, the film's $1.46m Friday gross and projected $4m opening weekend on just 809 screens ($5,218 per-screen) isn't too bad. The film, which stars Tom Hardy, Naomi Rapace, and a cute dog of some kind which every critic is talking about (I'm a cat person myself). Anyway, it's the kind of small-scale, star-driven, mainstream genre entre that would have a been a mainstream release ten years ago... which means I'm thrilled that it ended up in semi-wide release right off the bat. Kudos to Fox Searchlight on giving it a go. I have not seen the picture, but if you're curious check out this review from friend and colleague Aaron Neuwirth.

Also opening in uber-limited release is The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby. The romantic drama, starring Jessica Chastain and James McAvoy opened on four screens and earned $20,992 for the Weinstein Company. The interesting thing about this picture, which is about the slow death of a romantic relationship, is that it is the cobbled together version taken from two separate pictures (Him and Her) which basically tell the story from the point-of-view of each participant respectively. It will be interesting to see what valued this stand-alone version has once the separate cuts become more readily available. The third Atlas Shrugged installment, a franchise which keeps getting sequels despite market forces telling them that there is no demand, earned around $190k last night for a projected $590k weekend. As always, theaters love these films because none of the moviegoers will share their refreshments.

The rest is holdover news, and I will be brief today. Walt Disney's Guardians of the Galaxy earned $2.09 million yesterday, setting the stage for a $7m weekend and propelling the film over the $300m domestic milestone (it's at $299.98m). It should also top $600m worldwide this weekend as well. Paramount's Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles should earn around $5m for the weekend, after earning $1.17m yesterday, bringing its cume up to $181m. 20th Century Fox's Let's Be Cops, another mainstream film that overcame terrible timing in terms of real-life horrors, should bring it around $4m for the weekend, after earning $1.27m yesterday, which will bring its total up to $73m. Warner Bros.' If I Stay earned 1.16m (-27%) bringing its total up to $42m while Into the Storm earned $0.235m (-37%) and brought its domestic cume to $45.1m. Sony's When the Game Stands Tall earned another $0.715m and should earn around $2.6m for the weekend which will bring its cume to $26.8m. The November Man earned another $0.84m on its third Friday, bringing the Pierce Brosnan spy thriller over the $20m mark. Finally, The Giver should pass $40m by the end of the weekend, while The Hundred-Foot Journey should end the frame with around $49m domestic.

Join us tomorrow for more holdover news and weekend estimates.