Twenty-five years ago a buddy cop comedy starring two of TV's biggest stars was made for an estimated $23 million which went on to gross $141.4 million worldwide. It was somewhat groundbreaking at the time to have two black men co-lead a tentpole action flick in a genre that had been made popular by the oddball pairings of Eddie Murphy and Nick Nolte and Mel Gibson and Danny Glover up until that point. Martin Lawrence and Will Smith's debut would put to rest any doubts that the two of them were stars and eight years later they would return to the roles of Mike Lowery and Marcus Burnett for what remains, to this day, director Michael Bay's masterpiece of Bayhem in
Bad Boys II. That second film, which featured so many subplots and two different drug runner antagonists who looked similar enough they may as well have been father and son and culminated in Smith and Lawrence's characters driving through a small Cuban neighborhood in a yellow Hummer was made for a staggering $130 million in 2003, but made back its production budget domestically on its way to a cool $273 million worldwide. Seventeen years later and we finally have a third film in the franchise and while I think they should have maybe saved the "Bad Boys 4 Life" title for the next go-around, but alas here we are and
Bad Boys For Life defied all expectation and hope not just in its mid-January debut, but in overall quality as the $90 million production from Belgian directing duo Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah pulled in a whopping $73 million over the four-day MLK holiday frame. The film's $62.5 million three-day performance is also the second largest January three-day debut, just behind 2015's
American Sniper ($89.26m) as well as Sony's largest R-rated opening ever, topping the $57 million for
22 Jump Street in 2014. Even better is the "A" CinemaScore and 97% audience rating on RottenTomatoes from opening weekend audiences indicating this thing could have some serious legs. Beating the opening weekend numbers of summer tentpoles like
John Wick: Chapter 3 ($56.8m),
Mission: Impossible - Fallout ($61.2m),
Straight Outta Compton ($60.2m) and
Hobbs & Shaw ($60m) which all went on to gross over at least $160 million bodes well for the film and the franchise as it's not hard to see this now landing somewhere between $170-$180 million domestic. Internationally,
Bad Boys for Life brought in $38.6 million for a current global tally of nearly $112 million after four days in release. Needless to say, we'll probably be getting that
Bad Boys 4 much quicker than we did two or three. As always, be sure to follow the official
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