Sony puts summer back on track as Will Smith & Martin Lawrence’s ‘Bad Boys: Ride Or Die’ clocks US$56M opening

Sony‘s Bad Boys: Ride or Die had a great weekend of US$19.5M, for what’s shaping up to be a $56M opening. This is the highest-grossing R-rated opening since Oppenheimer last July, and Will Smith‘s sixth-highest U.S./Canada opening overall of his career and his 18th No. 1 opening as a leading man.

For Martin Lawrence, Bad Boys: Ride or Die is his 8th No. 1 domestic opening.

The Jerry Bruckheimer-produced directed fourthquel beats its recent round of tracking of US$40M+, but is also ahead of its initial US$50M+ forecast from three weeks ago, proving there’s still life in moviegoing.

Global was even bigger on Bad Boys 4 with US$104.6M.

Anyone obsessed that the Oscar slap would derail Smith’s career showed that Smith’s box office value among moviegoers would not tarnish post the controversial incident.

Bad Boys: Ride or Die's US$100 million production budget (a reasonable one in today's Hollywood climate) might make it yet another easy win for everyone involved, as it's earned over US$120 million worldwide in just six days and shows no signs of significantly slowing down before the end of the month.

That could soon be turned into enough interest for a fifth movie to be made.

According to legendary producer Jerry Bruckheimer, who recently talked to Deadline following the movie's strong first weekend, conversations regarding another sequel could be happening sooner rather than later.

No longer attached to Michael Bay and after being left dormant for around 17 years, 2020's Bad Boys for Life grossed over US$420 million worldwide on a US$90 million budget right before the Covid pandemic, so Sony and the creatives jumped on a sequel as soon as they could. Now, more than four years later, history is repeating itself, as audiences are still very much interested in Mike Lowrey and Marcus Burnett's low-stakes and highly comedic adventures as they fight crime and corruption.

[Source: Deadline]