Sorry Will Smith haters, Bad Boys 4 opened at the top of the box office

Opening weekend box office commentary has been fretful of late, as just about every weekend has been down significantly from what sales were in 2023 (and way more than what they were pre-pandemic). That remains true of this past weekend, but Bad Boys: Ride Or Die nevertheless had a solid showing, premiering on top for a domestic gross of approximately $56 million. Internationally, the movie—which stars Will Smith and Martin Lawrence—picked up $48,600,000, for a worldwide total of $104,600,000. That’s a completely respectable opening for a film with a reported budget of around $100 million, and in fact a pleasantly surprising one given the current box office handwringing going on lately.

The headline here is, of course, that Will Smith is still a blockbuster star, despite the drama of his personal life in the past few years. Smith and his wife Jada Pinkett-Smith have had a lot of personal issues aired to the public that could’ve changed people’s perception of the actor. (The couple did a lot of the airing themselves in their respective memoirs.) But things really boiled over the night Smith won his first Academy Award, when he slapped Chris Rock on the Oscars stage and warned the comic to “Keep my wife’s name out your fuckin’ mouth.”

Smith’s only other film since then, Emancipation, came out the same year as The Slap and only showed in select theaters before streaming on Apple TV+. The shadow of The Slap definitely loomed over Emancipation, but that might’ve been more of an “industry insider” backlash than anything. The film was more serious in nature, and its Oscar chances were definitely diminished because of the way Academy members still felt about him. Certainly, Apple wasn’t investing in an awards push for the film like it did for CODA in 2022 or Killers Of The Flower Moon in 2024.

Bad Boys: Ride Or Die, on the other hand, is a big, populist comedy in a proven franchise, so it’s an easier landing pad for Smith. Bad Boys For Life, the third installment of the franchise, was the last big box office hit before the pandemic shut everything down in 2020. Bad Boys 3 was a franchise high and had a bigger box office opening than Bad Boys 4. Nevertheless, this latest installment is among the top box office openings of the year after Dune: Part Two, Godzilla x Kong: The New Empire, Kung Fu Panda 4, and Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes. The film’s success so far proves that there’s been enough time for The Slap to fade from people’s memories—or that the general moviegoing public never really turned on him in the first place. Luckily, he and Lawrence are willing to keep making Bad Boys for however long people want to keep seeing Bad Boys.

Here’s the full weekend box office top ten, per Box Office Mojo:

• Bad Boys: Ride Or Die
• The Garfield Movie
• IF
• The Watchers
• Kingdom Of The Planet Of The Apes
• Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga
• The Fall Guy
• The Lord Of The Rings: Fellowship Of The Ring (re-release)
• The Lord Of The Rings: The Two Towers (re-release)
• The Strangers: Chapter One