If you’ve been wondering why it seems like Kevin Hart is in every movie lately, this headline should help explain it. Ride Along, Ice Cube and Kevin Hart’s horribly-reviewed buddy comedy, just had the best January opening ever. And it only cost $25 million to make. For Ice Cube, I guess you could say it was a good day.
…wracking up a superb $41.2 million over its Fri-Sun frame and is projected to earn around $47.8 million over the holiday. The debut is the largest in Martin Luther King Day weekend history, ahead of the $40m/$46m four-day debut of Cloverfield in 2008 as well as the biggest Fri-Sun opening in January history.
The opening easily tops the $39m debut of The Heat and now has the second-biggest buddy comedy debut for a non-sequel outside the $51m Fri-Sun debut of Men In Black back in 1997.
The film played 57% female, 54% over 25, 50% African-American, 30% Hispanic, and 12% Caucasian. [Forbes]
You ever notice how black people make movies with stale material like this (*points at Ride Along*), and white people milk stale concepts like this? (*points at Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit*) Jack Ryan: Shadow Recruit cost more than twice Ride Along‘s budget ($60m) and earned less than half ($17.2m).
The film played 52% male and 85% over 25.
Meanwhile, The Nut Job and Devil’s Due did just fine, pretty much what you’d expect from an animated movie and a low budget horror. I’m looking forward to next week, when we find out how the market responds to Aaron Eckhart playing a WASPy Frankenstein’s monster in I, Frankenstein. I mean that’s just an unbeatable concept, I can’t believe someone didn’t come up with it sooner.
