Universal’s Night School threw its doors open for session last night, ringing up $1.35 million at 2,500 theaters with showtimes that began at 7 PM.
With a projected opening weekend of $30M at 3,010 theaters, the Tiffany Haddish-Kevin Hart PG-13 movie is poised to be a box office anomaly for comedies, which have suffered greatly in recent months: The last big openings for a comedy were last year’s R-rated Girls Trip with Haddish ($31.2M, also a career record box office opening for Night School director Malcolm D. Lee) and Will Ferrell and Mark Wahlberg’s Daddy’s Home 2 ($29.6M).
Fandango is reporting that advance ticket sales for Night School are outpacing previous Hart comedies, the PG-13 Central Intellgience ($35.5M opening) and Ride Along 2 ($35.2M), at the same point in their sales cycle. Night School is 26% Rotten on Rotten Tomatoes, but that dismal grade won’t mess up its business this weekend. For R-rated raunchy fare, it’s another story.
Night School‘s preview last night came in higher than Hart’s-Ice Cube Ride Along movies (part 2 scored $1.26M and part 1 made $1.06M), but filed under Central Intelligence‘s $1.835M, the R-rated Hart-Ferrell comedy Get Hard ($1.8M), and Haddish’s Girls Trip which made $1.7M last July (many will say it’s a female-geared R-rated comedy, but the pic wound up playing broad).
For the second weekend in a row, Universal is expected to notch the No. 1 spot after last weekend’s Amblin movie The House With a Clock In Its Walls made $26.6M. That movie is set to ease 40% in Weekend 2 with around $16M, raising its 10-day cume by Sunday to $48.2M. Last night House made $1M at 3,592 locations, bringing its first-week tally to $32.2M.
Warner Bros Animation title Smallfoot is now tracking between $25M-$27M at 4,131 venues and held 4 PM previews last night, earning $850,000, which is $10K higher than House’s Thursday night previews last week. The pic also beat the previews of DreamWorks Animation’s Captain Underpants which earned $650K, and WB’s own animated Storks which made $435K before a $21.3M opening in September 2016. Smallfoot has a 75% fresh RT score, higher than House‘s 66% fresh and Storks’ 65% fresh.
CBS/Lionsgate has the Gale Anne Hurd- and Tucker Tooley-produced R-rated horror title Hell Fest, which kicked off last night with $435K. It’s looking at a $5M-$8M opening at 2,297 venues.
Pinnacle Peak via PureFlix has the modern-day reboot of Louisa May Alcott’s Little Women from filmmaker Clare Niederpruem, which at 643 venues is estimated at $1M.
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