• by Wayne Friedman , June 9, 2024

After some lackluster early results, the domestic movie-going business got a positive sign for the all-important summer theatrical period with an overachieving Sony Pictures’ “Bad Boys: Ride Or Die." It posted a big $56 million in box office sales, according to Comscore.

The film -- the fourth in the series -- was expected to earn between $48 million and $50 million, according to analysts.

“Bad Boys”  was the second highest opening for the franchise and biggest opening weekend for a R-rated movie since last summer. The film also earned $104.6 million globally. 

The movie is now viewed as a resurgence of Will Smith, who stars along with Martin Lawrence, since his highly-criticized/controversial appearance at the “The Oscars” live TV awards ceremony in February 2022 where he slapped Oscar presenter Chris Rock on stage.

The previous “Bad Boys for Life” movie opened domestically in January 2020 -- just before the start of the pandemic -- with $62 million. That movie wound up being the biggest grossing domestic movie for that year, $206.3 million; it pulled in $426.5 million, globally. 

This latest “Bad Boys” had a strong showing of young ticket buyers, where 44% of its audience was between the ages of 18-34, according to The Hollywood Reporter.

Sony Pictures spent a very modest $8.5 million in national TV advertising on 1,650 airings yielding 1.0 billion impressions so far for the movie, according to estimates from EDO Ad EnGage. Typical pre-openings for wide-release U.S. major studio-produced movies can range between $18 million to $25 million in national TV ad spend.

One other summer wide release, Warner Bros. “The Watchers,” took in a modest $7 million at the box office.

So far this year, total U.S. theatrical movies' national TV advertising spending is down 31% to $413.23 million ($596.4 million in 2023). Airings have dropped 34% to 85,480 (128,550 in 2023), according to EDO Ad EnGage estimates. 

Domestic theatrical box office revenue is down 27% to $2.7 billion season-to-date; it is also down 44% from the pre-pandemic 2019 season, according to IMDb Box Office Mojo.