Sorry Will Smith haters, Bad Boys 4 opened at the top of the box office
Will Smith and Martin Lawrence had a strong opening weekend for Bad Boys: Ride Or Die
Aux News Bad Boys
Opening weekend box office commentary has been fretful of late, as just about every weekend has been down significantly from what sales were in 2023 (and way more than what they were pre-pandemic). That remains true of this past weekend, but Bad Boys: Ride Or Die nevertheless had a solid showing, premiering on top for a domestic gross of approximately $56 million. Internationally, the movie—which stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence—picked up $48,600,000, for a worldwide total of $104,600,000. That’s a completely respectable opening for a film with a reported budget of around $100 million, and in fact a pleasantly surprising one given the current box office handwringing going on lately.
The headline here is, of course, that Will Smith is still a blockbuster star, despite the drama of his personal life in the past few years. Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith have had a lot of personal issues aired to the public that could’ve changed people’s perception of the actor. (The couple did a lot of the airing themselves in their respective memoirs.) But things really boiled over the night Smith won his first Academy Award, when he slapped Chris Rock on the Oscars stage and warned the comic to “Keep my wife’s name out your fuckin’ mouth.”
Smith’s only other film since then, Emancipation, came out the same year as The Slap and only showed in select theaters before streaming on Apple TV+. The shadow of The Slap definitely loomed over Emancipation, but that might’ve been more of an “industry insider” backlash than anything. The film was more serious in nature, and its Oscar chances were definitely diminished because of the way Academy members still felt about him. Certainly, Apple wasn’t investing in an awards push for the film like it did for CODA in 2022 or Killers Of The Flower Moon in 2024.
Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, on the other hand, is a big, populist comedy in a proven franchise, so it’s an easier landing pad for Smith. Bad Boys For Life, the third installment of the franchise, was the last big box office hit before the pandemic shut everything down in 2020. Bad Boys 3 was a franchise high and had a bigger box office opening than Bad Boys 4. Nevertheless, this latest installment is among the top box office openings of the year after Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Kung Fu Panda 4, and Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes. The film’s success so far proves that there’s been enough time for The Slap to fade from people’s memories—or that the general moviegoing public never really turned on him in the first place. Luckily, he and Lawrence are willing to keep making Bad Boys for however long people want to keep seeing Bad Boys.
Here’s the full weekend box office top ten, per Box Office Mojo:
- Bad Boys: Ride Or Die
- The Garfield Movie
- IF
- The Watchers
- Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
- Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
- The Fall Guy
- The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring (re-release)
- The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (re-release)
- The Strangers: Chapter One
67 Comments
Bad Boys 4 beating expectations is absolutely the headline, but the biggest shock might be Furiosa dropping out of the top 5. Even Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes hung in there (and is doing pretty well! Just saw that it has surpassed the previous movie’s domestic gross already).
It was strange how everyone collectively threw in the towel on the entire theater industry based on the poor performance of Furiosa (a fine, but unnecessary prequel to a movie that wasn’t exactly a hit) and Garfield (a bland kids movie for kids too young to know what a Garfield is). The box offices aren’t doing great this year, but I think that’s been more of a reflection of the studios missing the mark on what audiences are wanting rather than everybody deciding movie theaters are over.And yeah, Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes deserves a lot of credit for beating expectations. It had plenty of reasons for audiences to pass on it (fourth movie in the reboot series, sort of a reboot itself, new creative team, no Andy Serkis), but it’s had some impressive staying power. I enjoyed it, and I’m glad it’s doing well.
I’m chalking it up to the misguided assumption that Furiosa was going to be a monster hit, and when it underperformed, people thought, “Well, the problem can’t be the movie, so it must be movie theaters!” in addition to a successive string of abnormally sluggish weekends for the box office.My takeaway is that movie theaters aren’t a destination. People by and large don’t go just because they’re there (and this might also be partially because of the decline of malls in America, but I’m not sure) and watch whatever they have. But people will go if they have something people want to see. This is terrible for the theaters themselves, but it’s not really news either.I also wonder what, if any, impact the studio had. Furiosa is distributed by Warner Bros., which owns Max. Maybe people know it’ll end up there pretty soon and are waiting it out. I know I am. Bad Boys on the other hand is distributed by Sony, which doesn’t have its own streaming service. I’m not saying this plays a big role, because I don’t think the majority of moviegoers care to check which studio is distributing which movie, but maybe it plays a role.
The average person has no idea which streamers each movie goes to… there is simply still a huge audience for Will Smith and the Bad Boys franchise.
While this may be beyond some average viewers, most smart TV features(and Roku and FireTV) let you search for a movie or show and will tell you what a service has it.
I don’t think the majority of moviegoers care to check which studio is distributing which moviehttps://www.avclub.com/1851531200
Furiosa comes out on streaming next week. I cancelled my plans to see it this weekend upon learning that. So yah you are correct.
Fury Road wasn’t a hit but it had legs and got a ton of critical acclaim. Miller’s career is cool in the fact that despite not being hits he often can get his movies made and almost all of them grow in popularity post release
What’s wild is that Kingdom of the Apes is already streaming and I watched it full quality in my bedroom last night. It’s my birthday this week and I thought oh hey Ill go see Furiosa, but that shits on digital release next week and as much as I like an outing to the theatre I don’t like tossing around cash. They’re shooting themselves in the leg with this small ass window. By the time I’m ready to see anything new in theatres its already streaming.
Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes isn’t streaming yet.
You mean you torrented it? Because I don’t think it’s available to rent digitally on Apple or Amazon yet.
I wish he would make more straight comedies, I’d see so much more of his stuff.
Maybe now that he has his Oscar.
When has he ever made a gay comedy?
I know you were being hilarious and cheeky with the comment, but Six Degrees of Separation is pretty damn close, though I wouldn’t call it a gay comedy, I imagine that genre is reserved to the premise revolving around someones sexuality, like In & Out or The Birdcage, or Bros.
Yeah, Six Degrees of Separation wouldn’t qualify as a “gay comedy” but that was the moment that I thought Will Smith was maybe way more talented than he had shown and that perhaps he would be a really good actor. Sadly, he made a lot of choices that were more based on the blockbuster likelihood of the film than the possibility of any kind of actual acting (i.e., other than “Will Smith IS Will Smith in ___________”)
He did get a lot of backlash for that role, not to mention a lifetime of gay rumors, which I think resulted in him needing to wipe the slate clean (I didn’t read his book but that was my impression; I remember seeing Denzel told him not to do it). He wanted to carve out his own lane so he picked “broad and global” because comedy was too crowded, for better or worse. But maybe it led him to doubt his instincts, who knows; his options were definitely limited at the time and frankly he’s done a tremendous job of making his own luck.
Yeah, I definitely don’t hate Will Smith or anything. I don’t even dislike him. Aside from slapping Chris Rock, he’s always seemed relatively anodyne and, for the most part, reasonably likable as a person. That being the public persona at least. He may be a monster to work/live with, but he’s always “seemed” like someone who doesn’t want to cause offense or challenge anything that might harm his image and ability to make a lot of money doing big movies.
Will Smith’s public persona reminds me of what Chris Rock said about the slap and his response to people saying that he should have hit him back – “My mother taught us that you don’t fight in front of White people.” At least for that moment, Will forgot that lesson.
His movies are not exactly my bag; he goes for super broad stories whereas I gravitate towards super specific stuff that’s lucky if it makes its tiny budget back, but I think it’s pretty clear that HW boxed him in and then got mad at him for being in a box, and is now treating him as if he did 9/11.
He boxed himself in having molded his movie career after Tom Cruise’s
I think more Arnold, no?
He goes back and forth from action to drama, so I’d lean towards Cruise, but Arnold has that same angle as far “I am the movie” so yeah, Arnold fits that bill the same
Whoa this comment is from like the 90s… we generally don’t bully people for their sexuality anymore. “Lifetime of gay rumors” is such a ridiculous string of words I’m kinda shocked.
I was so shocked that he won best actor just for adopting a lisp in the King Richard role but I guess he’s been hitting audiences over the head for so long with “Will Smith IS Will Smith” that it seemed impressive? That’s the lesser thing talked about about that night…. was his performance in King Richard actually Oscar-worthy (Yes I did see it).
My favorite film with him is the first Men In Black. Yeah, it’s still Smith playing Smith, but I still found myself rooting for his character and he played very well off of Tommy Lee Jones.
Swag Messiah’s a troll. Just dismiss their bullshit. Click the three dots next to their comment & click dismiss.
The Watchers only made $7M in its opening weekend so I guess you could say that nobody watches The Watchers.
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes? Nemo.
I saw it this weekend. It was a snooze, and there were also a grand total of 2 of us in the showing I went to.
Alan Moore can finally stop asking.
So far, I think there’s decent evidence that the children of famous directors who themselves become directors are worse than their famous parent.
Sophia Coppola < Francis Ford Coppola
Jennifer Lynch < David Lynch
Jake Scott < Ridley Scott
Goro Miyazaki < Hiyao Miyazaki
Mario van Peebles < Melvin van Peebles
Nick Cassavetes < John Cassavetes
Bryce Dallas Howard has only done TV directing so far…
Where I might be willing to put the offspring ahead:
Rob Reiner over Carl Reiner
and uncertain re: Jason vs. Ivan Reitman
Sophia Coppola is decent but yaaaaaah. Get ur own identity kiddos!
Watch ‘Jack’ and you might reconsider that Coppola ranking.
If you’ve done the Godfather parts I and II and Apocalypse Now, you can still have a Jack and still be great.
There is no uncertainty re: Ivan/Jason. Sophia, Mario, and Nick are pretty darned good. Not sure what the point of any of this is.
Cucks deserve love too.
What about us Will Smith indifferents?
Get with the program. It’s 2024, you MUST have strong opinions on EVERY topic.
Yah but not having an opinion on something like public violence = indifference towards violence. Idk if you’re peanut brain understands that not having an opinion on something can in itself be a stance.
Idk if violence is one of those things you can’t have a stance on. You can’t ignore violence. That’s just called being a pussy and not having an opinion.
I’m Will Smith agnostic. He may or may not exist but I’ll find out eventually
My stance is that I may as well believe in Will Smith. If I’m wrong, nothing happens, and if I’m right, I’ll enjoy the full glory of the Willennium.
Yes, but believing in Will Smith for pragmatic reasons (rather than having actual faith in Will Smith) is disingenuous and morally suspect – and he will see through that and you will not receive his blessings of Willness. True Willenism is not a matter of rational choice and must come in the absence of evidence — else it is not true faith. “And Will Smith looked upon his works and all that he had made, and lo, it was mediocre overall”
Teach a man to get jiggy with it and he’ll get jiggy for a lifetime.
Ahhh. Jazzy Jeff’s Wager.
You’ll be given cushy jobs!
WHAT??! You MUST pick a side!!! MUST!!! /s
Yeah, it’s a very low bar this summer, sadly.
It’s a really weird summer. Sure there are very few super hero movies but there just seems to be very few traditional summer blockbuster movies coming out in general
Crazy what happens when one company (Disney) owns everything. Your one traditional summer blockbuster, Kingdom of the planet of the Apes, is also Disney now.
I have no preference either way on Smith , but the Bad Boys movies are and have always been fucking terrible.
HOW. DARE. YOU speak the absolute truth!?!
Hold on, ya’ll told me streaming was killing the movies. You also said the pandemic took people out of the habit of going to movie theaters. And that the strike killed the box office. So how the fuck did the fourth movie in a 30-year-old franchise starring The Slapper overperform to a $52 million opening? 😂Suddenly all the excuses for why the supposedly “good” movies bombed over the last couple years don’t hold up.
Most people did not care about the Slap.
I’ve always liked Chris Rock way more than I ever liked Will Smith and I thought “well that was a dick move” when it happened, but I never thought “well, that’s it for me with regards to anything having to do with Will Smith!” I felt bad for Rock, but he rolled with it and responded at a later point. He seems all done and moved on, so maybe everyone else can do so too now? I’m pretty sure Chris Rock himself doesn’t even want you to hate Will Smith or to boycott his movies.
I love when people prefix their opinion with “most people think”. It truly is the definition of ignorance to assume everyone’s opinion aligns with yours.
I love when people make assumptions about my opinions when I don’t even state what my opinion is. Bad Boys 4 made $56 million this weekend. Do you think all those people cared about The Slap and saw it anyway?
Did I assume that everyone’s opinion aligned with “mine”? Or did I deduce that most people didn’t care about The Slap based on Bad Boys 4’s opening weekend box office?
Also, not sure that needing $10M to break the total gross of the first Bad Boys is a hell of a victory there.
It’s star power look where the money is. You can slap Tom Cruise on anything rn and call it a hit.
This will only encourage Will Smith to continue slapping whoever he pleases.
Funny thing is he gets slapped in Ride or Die.
Can we lock him in a room with Ted Cruz?
All the shock and handwringing over this over the past couple of days has made it perfectly clear that the entertainment pundit class has no black friends. Because this was….not surprising at all.
I don’t think you need to be black to get the Bad Boys films lol. Will Smith is basically white at this point.
Is it crazy to suggest that the shift back from genre films to A-list movie star films is happening? Top Gun Maverick people