How Will Smith’s ‘Bad Boys 3’ May Nab Another Unusual Box Office Milestone

If Mulan and Tenet are delayed or underperform, then Bad Boys For Life could have one of the very longest reigns at the top of the domestic box office.

Since I can’t spend the morning dissecting Soul’s Thursday grosses, post-debut legs of Candyman or forthcoming openings of Top Gun: Maverick and In the Heights, I wanted to see where the year-end releases of 2019 stacked up, in unadjusted global grosses, compared to the few global hits of 2020. Because, since there have been no new releases since mid-March, and no global successes since mid-February, the “biggest movies in 2020” list is almost dominated not by 2020 releases but by late-2019 offerings.

The “what a movie earned in the year it was released versus the next year” thing can be slightly complicated for films that open at the end of the year or platform in December but go wide in January or February. The biggest domestic grosser of 2014 is not Guardians of the Galaxy ($333 million) or The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I ($337 million). It’s actually Clint Eastwood’s American Sniper, a film that earned a whopping $1.329 million in 2014.

The Bradley Cooper war actioner went wide on MILK weekend in 2015 with a jaw-dropping $107 million Fri-Mon wide release debut toward an eventual $350 million cume. In terms of late-in the-year giants, Star Wars: The Force Awakens earned $286 million of its record $937 million cume in 2016. Avatar earned $466 million of its $749 million original domestic cume in 2010, while Titanic earned $488 million of its $600 million cume not in 1997 but in the first few months of 1998.

Bad Boys For Life is still the top global grosser of 2020, with $415 million worldwide after opening in mid-January with a $73 million Fri-Mon domestic launch. It has been the year’s top movie since opening day. Sonic the Hedgehog remains in second place with $306 million global after opening in mid-February with a $70 million Fri-Mon debut. With the exception of a few low-budget wins (The Invisible Man, The Gentlemen and Emma which earned $25 million on a $10 million budget), that’s it for hits from this year.

The next biggest-grossing movies, in terms of money earned this year, are Sony’s Jumanji: The Next Level ($303 million out of an alleged $803 million cume), Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker ($286 million out of $1.074 billion) and Frozen II ($226 million out of $1.45 billion). The next-biggest global grossers are the disappointing Dolittle ($223 million on a $175 million budget) and Birds of Prey ($201 million/$83 million) followed by The Invisible Man ($127 million/$9 million) and The Gentlemen ($115 million/$35 million).

Bad Boys For Life and Sonic the Hedgehog the only two outright big-scale hits of the year. Moreover, the well-reviewed and well-received sequel is on the precipice of snagging one of the longest “in year” reigns at the top of the global box office in modern history. Even if Tenet or Mulan surpass $204.4 million domestic, one or both will probably pass the Bad Boys sequel in mid-August at the earliest. That alone will give the Sony flick seven months at the top.

Chris Nolan’s Inception, opening under the best possible circumstances, topped $205 million on day 20 after opening with $62 million in July of 2010. Oz: The Great and Powerful needed 35 days to pass $204.5 million after a $79 million debut in 2013. Aladdin needed 14 days to top $205 million after a $117 million Fri-Mon debut last Memorial Day. So even under best-case-scenario, Bad Boys For Life will be the biggest movie of 2020 for around seven months.

What’s the tops for this weird record? Well, Spider-Man topped Ice Age on May 9, 2002, Spider-Man 3 topped 300 on day nine on May 12, 2007 and Iron Man 3 in 2013 was tops for 2013 from May 5 (passing The Croods) until Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part I passed it in early 2014. But the biggest, at least in modern history, remain the nine-month-plus reign of Avengers: Endgame (which topped Captain Marvel on day five of late-April release) in 2019 and the 10.5-month reign of Black Panther (which topped Maze Runner: The Death Cure and Fifty Shades Freed on its $75 million opening day) in 2018.

Slight clarification, but The Hunger Games: Catching Fire needed just 49 days, from November to January, to pass Iron Man 3’s $409 million cume and become tops for 2013. Nonetheless, Iron Man 3 was the top domestic earner of 2013 for eight months. Iron Man 3 now holds, arguably by default, the longest “reign” for a film that didn’t actually win the title of year’s biggest domestic grosser.

Even a seven-month reign for Bad Boys for Life will be more-or-less tied with The Lion King ($312 million in 1994/1995) which was topped as 1994’s biggest domestic earner by Forrest Gump ($329 million in 1994/1995) around seven months after its June 24 wide release. Needless to say, as long as new movies aren’t opening or don’t perform as hoped, Bad Boys for Life is the year’s biggest movie by a wide margin. And if Wonder Woman 1984, not Tenet or Mulan, does the trick, then Bad Boys For Life will be 2020’s biggest movie for (depending on how quickly the superhero sequel passes $205 million) nine or ten months.

But what if Wonder Woman 1984 either gets delayed or underperforms? Then it’ll be up to Black Widow starting November 6, giving Bad Boys 3 a near-record ten-month run at the top. Pixar’s Soul would seem like a safe bet under normal circumstances, but these are not normal circumstances. Dune and Top Gun: Maverick were longshots to pass $200 million domestic, while even No Time to Die was no guarantee since only the last two 007 films (Spectre and Skyfall) have done so.

If things go… skewed, even accounting that not all of these upcoming releases have to top $200 million domestic (especially if they soar overseas) to be hits, Bad Boys For Life, an R-rated, $90 million, star-driven action sequel, may be the first movie to top a given calendar year from beginning to end. Had things gone “as planned,” the top global grosser would likely have been the “real world” F9, but I digress. That Bad Boys 3 is about over-the-top action hero cops who bend the law in order to get the bad guys is an irony not lost on me in 2020.