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Sony’s Bad Boys for Life, a sequel 17 years in the waiting, previewed at 3,154 theaters last night making a great $6.36M. That amount for the R-rated film is bigger than American Sniper‘s $5.3M preview, which turned out to be the record opener over the 2015 MLK holiday with a 4-day of $107.2M.
Sony is seeing a $38M opening for Bad Boys for Life, but tracking yesterday raised their projections to $50M-$56M for the weekend ahead of the $40M+ figures we saw midweek. Other MLK previews that Bad Boys for Life beat include Ride Along which made $1.1M off 9PM previews back in 2014 and Ride Along 2 grossed $1.3M off 7PM showtimes. Ride Along is the second highest opener over the MLK holiday with $48.6M, while Ride Along 2 is 5th with $41M.
The Will Smith and Martin Lawrence re-team last night drew 39% African american, 33% Caucasian, 17% Hispanic, 4% Asian, and 7% others. Dominant crowds were 45% males 25+, 28% females 25+, 16% males under 25, and 10% females under 25 per Comscore/Screen Engine’s Posttrak. Previews began at 4PM.
Critics overall enjoyed the movie at 75% fresh on Rotten Tomatoes and Thursday night audience really liked what they saw giving the Adil and Bilall directed action film 4 1/2 stars and a 73% definite recommend.
Universal’s Dolittle previews began at 5PM yesterday with a very low $925K at 3,050 theaters. Pic expands to 4,155 locations today. The $175M production is expected to bomb this weekend with a $24M-$28M take. Exits for the Robert Downey Jr. were better among families who turned out at 43% on PostTrak with 4 1/2 stars from parents (17%) and 4 1/2 stars from kids under 12 (26%). General audiences at 57% stuck their tongues out at the taking animal movie giving it 2 1/2 stars.
Universal will fare better this weekend with the Amblin/New Republic production 1917 which led all movies in regular release last night with $3M, -10% from Wednesday, for a first wide week of $51.9M, running total of $54.6M with monies since its limited Christmas Day launch. With ten Oscar noms, the Sam Mendes WWI movie is expected to make around $27M in its second wide weekend over 4 days.