Hollywood tried to resuscitate two bygone series this weekend. Only one came fully back to life.
Sony’s “Bad Boys for Life” was far and away the top movie at domestic theaters this weekend, leaving Universal’s “Dolittle” in the dust as it collected an estimated $59.2 million in tickets Friday through Sunday. That’s just a bit less than the opening weekend “Bad Boys II” had in 2003, adjusting for inflation — a remarkable start for a sequel being released more than 15 years later. “Bad Boys for Life” picked up an additional $38.6 million overseas this weekend, according to the studio.
In the new movie, Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reprise their roles as Miami buddy cops, careening through a plot that has something to do with a drug cartel. The sequel offers a plethora of jokes about aging and a great many explosions — though conspicuously absent is the director Michael Bay, who helmed the first two “Bad Boys” movies. “Bad Boys for Life” was instead directed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah. It received generally favorable reviews from critics, and currently holds a 76 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes. (The new directors “blow things up real good,” Glenn Kenny noted in his review for The New York Times.)
[Read our critic's review of “Bad Boys for Life.”]
“Bad Boys for Life” is expected to net about $8.9 million more in ticket sales during the Monday holiday according to Comscore, which compiles box office data. Already, the sales have been “particularly good in what continues to be an unsettled environment for sequels and remakes,” David A. Gross, who runs Franchise Entertainment Research, a film consultancy, wrote in a weekend report.
Case in point: “Dolittle.”
That movie, which casts Robert Downey Jr. as the titular animal-whispering veterinarian, made an estimated $22.5 million in ticket sales Friday through Sunday. It’s expected to sell around $7.5 million more in tickets during the Monday holiday, but it will be a very long road to profitability: “Dolittle” cost at least $200 million to make and market.
Also coming well over a decade and a half after Eddie Murphy played the veterinarian in “Dr. Dolittle 2,” the release of “Dolittle” on the same weekend as “Bad Boys for Life” — and its less successful sales — speak to audiences’ inconsistent willingness to trek to theaters for sequels and reboots in the age of streaming. Poor reviews (“Dolittle” currently holds an 18 percent fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes) probably didn’t help.
“Dolittle” is grappling for second place with Universal’s “1917,” a World War I epic from Sam Mendes that was the top movie last weekend. “1917” brought in an estimated $22.1 million in sales this weekend. It will likely land in third place, just behind “Dolittle,” but the order could change when final figures are calculated early this week.
Rounding out the top five were Sony’s “Jumanji: The Next Level,” which took in around $9.6 million this weekend, its sixth in theaters, and Disney’s “Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker.” That movie came in fifth, with about $8.4 million in domestic ticket sales Friday through Sunday. It was in its fifth weekend in theaters.
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January 20, 2020 at 02:25AM
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‘Bad Boys for Life’ Excelled at the Box Office. ‘Dolittle’ Didn’t. - The New York Times
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