Will Smith’s ‘Bad Boys for Life’ Tops MLK Weekend Box Office

(Bloomberg) -- Will Smith and Martin Lawrence topped the North American box office with a return to the roles that helped launch their film careers, starring as two unorthodox cops in “Bad Boys for Life.”

Sony Corp.’s long-awaited third “Bad Boys” installment opened as the No. 1 film of the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend in the U.S., collecting $59.2 million theaters in the first three days, researcher Comscore Inc. estimated Sunday. Analysts had expected $37 million to $42 million.

Key Insights

• “Bad Boys for Life” benefited from being the rare sequel that’s more critically acclaimed than its predecessors. Rotten Tomatoes critics give the movie a 74% score, well above the 42% and 23% scores of the 1995 and 2003 installments.

• Boxoffice Pro had projected that the three-day weekend’s top 10 films would increase about 12% to 17% from the MLK weekend a year ago. At the time, “Glass” opened with $40.3 million as part of an overall $109.5 million three-day weekend for the top 10.
• Universal Pictures’ “Dolittle” landed in second place with $22.5 million. Analysts once expected Robert Downey Jr.’s appeal to draw $35 million to $55 million in its four-day start, but lowered their forecast to $20 million to $25 million. Rotten Tomatoes critics give the film a 18% score. It cost $175 million to make, according to IMDbPro.
• “1917,” the World War I epic and surprise winner of the Golden Globe award for best drama, landed in third place with $22.1 million, followed by “Jumanji: The Next Level” with $9.6 million.

Get More

• See the weekend release schedule.
• See Box Office Pro’s long-range forecast.

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