The decade might be only three weeks old, but this may still rank among the decade’s biggest box office surprises even by December 2029.

Sony / Columbia’s action comedy sequel Bad Boys For Life opened with a $62.5 three-day / $73.0M four-day weekend if including the Monday holiday.

For context, three-day projections were generally in the low $40M range. On one popular box office prediction website, the highest that any user projected for the three-day was $51M.

Studio estimates kept going higher and higher. Saturday’s four-day projection was $63.5M, then that increased to $68.1M on Sunday, then increased again to $73.4M on Monday.

(The actual declined slightly to $73.0M when revealed on Tuesday.)

Not Bad

For Life debuted about equal to 2003’s previous installment Bad Boys II, which opened with $70.6M adjusted for ticket price inflation ($46.5M originally).

Yet that film opened in July instead of January and was at the peak of Will Smith’s stardom, making For Life‘s approximately even opening arguably even more impressive.

Compared to other similar action sequels or reboots in the past year, For Life topped both the $17.8M total of November’s Charlie’s Angels and the $21.3M total of June’s Shaft on its opening Friday alone. 

Its opening weekend alone bested the $62.2M cumulative total of November’s Terminator: Dark Fate, and almost overtook the $80.0M cumulative total of June’s Men in Black: International.

For comparison, Smith’s similar action movie Gemini Man underperformed in October with a $48.5M cumulative total, which For Life exceeded in its opening weekend.

Studio Heads

This also vaults Sony into the highest-grossing studio of 2020 so far, with $228.4M versus Disney’s $190.5M.

While Disney will almost certainly finish the year on top, they had also spent the first two weekends of the year ahead, with some forecasting that they wouldn’t lose their lead at any point.

It Did Little

The financial news was on the opposite end of the spectrum for Universal’s family film Dolittle, which opened with a $21.8M three-day / $28.3M four-day weekend despite its estimated $175M production budget.

That’s -2.4% below 1998’s Doctor Dolittle even in pure dollars, or -49.7% below if adjusting for ticket price inflation.

It also opened -29.7% behind 2001’s Dr. Dolittle 2 if adjusting for ticket price inflation.

Silver or Bronze

Last weekend’s leader, Universal’s war thriller 1917, fell to either second or third place, depending how you look at it.

For the three-day weekend, it took the silver medal with $21.9M; for the four-day weekend, it took the bronze medal with $26.9M.

Among other January wide release war movie, its -27.2% MLK Day weekend decline was steeper than the -23.8% for Zero Dark Thirty but milder than the -31.4% for Lone Survivor.

How’d This Weekend Compare?

Total box office this four-day weekend was $205.0M. That’s +55.2% above last weekend, and even the three-day was +25.7% above last weekend.

The four-day MLK Day weekend was also +26.3% above this same extended MLK Day weekend last year, when Glass led with $46.5M.

The Year So Far

Year-to-date box office stands at $670.7M. That’s +10.3% above this same date last year, up from +5.3% after last weekend.

The post Weekend Box Office Results: <em>Bad Boys For Life</em>, <em>Dolittle</em> appeared first on Boxoffice.