Scary Movie returns politically incorrect humour to top of box office; Masters Of The Universe bombs
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Anna Faris (left) and Regina Hall in Scary Movie, which collected an estimated $71 million at North American theatres over the weekend.
PHOTO: UIP
Brooks Barnes
LOS ANGELES – Roughly a decade ago, Hollywood decided that crude, politically incorrect humour was a commercial and cultural liability.
The #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements were gaining momentum, and studio executives (largely liberal and intensely risk-averse) stopped supporting offence-courting comedies. Why invite a Twitter firestorm?
That period of timidity – some would call it “wokeism” – may have ended over the weekend.
“The culture is ready for a level of outrageousness that has been missing,” Josh Goldstine, president of global marketing and distribution at Paramount Pictures, said on June 7.
“You have to have the willingness, the courageousness, to just go for it.”
Scary Movie, promoted by Paramount with the phrases “cancelling cancel culture” and “lines will be crossed”, collected an estimated US$55 million (S$71 million) at North American theatres over the weekend, according to Comscore, a data service.
That total, easily enough for No. 1, was roughly 22 per cent more than box-office analysts had predicted before the movie’s release based on advance ticket sales and surveys that track moviegoer interest.
The opening for Scary Movie was the biggest for an R-rated comedy in 12 years. In 2014, the vulgar 22 Jump Street took in US$57 million in its first three days, or about US$80 million after adjusting for inflation.
“We could have gone a little bit harder,” co-producer/co-creator Marlon Wayans, who stars in the film and contributed to its screenplay, said in a telephone interview.
“We were trying to hit a bull’s-eye. If you hit too hard, it becomes real divisive in comedy and you lose people. We were just trying to keep everybody in that bull’s-eye where everybody could have fun with the laughs.”
Scary Movie, a reboot of the 2000s-era parody franchise created by the Wayans family which stars returning cast members Anna Faris and Regina Hall, cost an estimated US$30 million to make, not including marketing.
In cinemas overseas, Scary Movie collected US$50.5 million, for a global opening total of US$105.5 million.
Masters Of The Universe fizzled in second place. The fantasy action adventure movie, which cost Amazon MGM Studios more than US$200 million to make and market, debuted to roughly US$29 million in ticket sales, which was about 17 per cent less than analysts had forecast. NYTIMES
Scary Movie is showing in Singapore cinemas.
