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'Good Boys' Tops Box Office With A Very Good $8.3 Million Friday

This article is more than 4 years old.

Studios matter. Most audiences don't choose to see a film (or not see a film) based on the studio, but bigger studios tend to have an advantage when it comes to spending marketing bucks, getting the word out and getting butts in the seats. A Laika film distributed by Focus Features is going to do better, almost by default, than one distributed by Annapurna. Back when Lionsgate could barely open an envelope outside of the Saw or Tyler Perry franchises, Katherine Heigl's Killers (a $16 million debut after the $23 million-plus openings of 27 Dresses and The Ugly Truth) hurt her momentum to an extent which she never recovered. Ditto Amanda Seyfried's Letters to Juliette, which Summit opened to "only" $14 million in May of 2010.

There are obvious exceptions, but movies that are distributed by smaller studios don't generally do as well as the ones from larger studios (or studios that excel at a certain genre). I bring this all up not to dredge up pre-Expendables Lionsgate history, or to again weep for the cruel fate of Laika's The Missing Link, but to note that many of the "Egad, why aren't more people seeing these movies?" whiffs this summer came from small studios or from studios not accustomed to selling a specific kind of movie. The realities of the current marketplace notwithstanding, could Seth Rogen and Charlize Theron's Long Shot have performed better over at Sony versus Lionsgate? Would Booksmart have performed better over at Universal versus United Artist Releasing?

Universal's Good Boys topped the box office last night. Universal has excelled at selling mainstream comedies, to the extent that any studio can excel at such a thing in 2019. The well-reviewed, but star-free (all due respect to Jacob Tremblay) R-rated farce, produced by Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg, about three middle school boys who get into adventures while trying to retrieve a lost drone, over-performed last night with an $8.3 million Friday gross. That includes $2.1 million in Thursday previews and positions Gene Stupnitsky and Lee Eisenberg $20 million-budgeted flick for an over/under $21 million opening weekend. It'll be the first R-rated comedy to do so since Melissa McCarthy's The Boss ($22 million) in April of 2016. Good Boys will notch the biggest original comedy debut of the year.

For reference, Lionsgate's A Madea Funeral ($27 million) is a sequel and Paramount's What Men Want ($24 million) is a gender-swapped remake of What Women Want. Barring a miracle from Playing with Fire or Jexi, Universal will have the biggest original comedy debut for the third year in a row, following Night School ($27 million) in 2018 and Girls Trip ($30 million on the same weekend where Dunkirk nabbed $50 million) in 2017. Yes, we're far away from a point where WB's We're the Millers could open with $35 million over a Wed-Sun August debut and leg it to $150 million, but (inflation aside) this isn't far off from the $21 million launch of The 40-Year Old Virgin back in August if 2005.

Universal sold the heck out of this one, with early screenings, clever online advertising which emphasized the film's core gimmick (an R-rated comedy starring kids not old enough to see an R-rated movie) and the same mid-August release date that worked for the likes of The 40-Year Old Virgin, Superbad, We're the Millers and Crazy Rich Asians. It helps that Good Boys is a very good, very sweet and very funny comedy, existing not as a celebration of "boys will be boys" debauchery but rather as a good-hearted caper comedy about generally decent kids who happen to swear a lot. We can talk legs tomorrow, but I'd be shocked if this one doesn't leg out at least as well as Blockers.

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