Bad Boys For Life Sets Opening Night Box Office Preview Record For January

Bad Boys for Life is in theaters right now and fans seem to be loving the return trip to the franchise. Well, the box office sales absolutely support that as a new report from The Hollywood Reporter shows that the film is setting January records at the box office. The preview numbers for the film came in at a substantial $6.4 million, a new high for the first month of the year. Friday's take will probably be even more staggering when the final tally rolls in. THR has the number somewhere above $22 million in their estimation which is a good start for a film some remained skeptical of after all this time. Bad Boys for Life ended up costing $90 million to make before marketing came into play. So, it could be over a third of the way back to earning that total by the time the first day wraps. Helping matters is the fact that Universal's Dolittle isn't offering much resistance. Series star Will Smith talked about the challenge of making sequels on The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon recently.

"What we tried to do, that was really critical and important to me, is not try to just do the old movies again," Smith said of both previous Bad Boys movies. "You had to take into consideration the time, had to take into consideration how the characters would have grown. And the reason it took so long is because I didn't want to make it just as a cash grab. You know, 'Hey, everybody loves sequels, let's just do a sequel.'"

It looks like Bad Boys for Life is doing just fine. The fans waited a long time and honestly the familiarity between Smith and Lawrence probably paid dividends as audiences could use something comfortable as we all settle into the new year. 2020 might be filled with uncertainty, but that feeling of returning to old friends flows throughout the film. Comicbook.com's Kofi Outlaw said this about the third film in the series:

"Free from the high-octane grip of director Michael Bay for the first time, Bad Boys for Life allows the franchise to go through some serious maturation. The threequel delivers a much deeper and emotional chapter in the saga of Will Smith and Martin Lawrence's buddy-cop duo, with much lighter shades of the violent action and raunchy comedy that has defined the series. That's either a vast improvement or a massive loss of focus, depending on how you feel about the series, and, overall, Bad Boys For Life feels like a somewhat mixed bag that still manages to win viewers over, thanks to a combination of star power, nostalgia, and some fun new additions."

Bad Boys for Life is in theaters right now.