Weekend Box Office: Mean Girls’ queen bees beat The Beekeeper

Despite Jason Statham’s newfound command over the bees, he wasn’t able to overcome the power of Mean Girls’ queen bees at the domestic box office this weekend, as Variety reports that the musical adaptation of Tina Fey’s 2004 classic is the highest grossing movie of the week. The film, which stars Angourie Rice as high school newcomer Cady Heron, brought in $32 million during the holiday weekend at the U.S. box office—not bad for a movie that originally wasn’t intended to be shown in theaters at all.

Despite a few suggestions that the movie (directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Perez Jr.) caught at least a small percentage of moviegoers offguard when its characters burst into song—marketing for the movie has gone heavy on the Mean Girls, light on The Musical—the film still acquitted itself well, especially considering its budget was only $36 million. Its international take was a little lower, at $6.5 million, but it hasn’t opened yet in either the U.K. or New Zealand, so there’s plenty of room to grow. And, again, this is all for a film that originally wasn’t slated for a theatrical release at all, having originally been conceived as an original film for streaming service Paramount+ before enthusiastic test screenings changed executive minds.

Statham’s The Beekeeper didn’t do too poorly for itself either, really, especially since director David Ayer only spent $16.8 million making the action thriller. The movie made that same $16.8 million back in domestic markets, and even more overseas, adding up to $39.1 million total—more than Mean Girls brought in globally, in fact. Not bad for a January release that’s been widely drubbed by critics for being kind of, well… dumb.

Meanwhile, the other movie opening this week, Lakeith Stanfield’s Biblical comedy The Book Of Clarence didn’t fare anywhere near as well: The film opened ninth at the domestic box office, bringing in just $3.1 million against a $40 million budget.