Jennifer Lawrence’s No Hard Feelings Box Office Launches With $2.15 Million in Previews

Jennifer Lawrence’s new R-rated comedy No Hard Feelings earned $2.15 million in Thursday preview screenings, pacing toward an expected $12 million opening weekend. The film hails from former The Office writer Gene Stupnitsky, whose debut feature Good Boys also earned $2.1 million in previews. It went on to open at $21 million, but that was in a friendlier 2019 box office environment. That movie ended up earning over $100 million worldwide — a number that seems unlikely for No Hard Feelings unless it becomes a serious awards contender or has some other unexpected development to give it long legs.

Current projections expect The Flash to retain its #1 spot at this weekend’s box office, earning between $22 million and $25 million. Elemental and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse are expected to be neck-and-neck for the #2 spot, with Elemental projected for somewhere between $14 millionand $16 million, while Spider-Verse is likely to earn between $13.5 million and $15 million. Rounding out the top five after No Hard Feelings should be Asteroid City, Wes Anderson’s latest film, which had a limited release last weekend but is opening wide today. That film is expected to make between $7 million and $8 million.

In No Hard Feelings, Maddie (Lawrence) thinks she’s found the answer to her financial troubles when she discovers an intriguing job listing: wealthy helicopter parents looking for someone to “date” their introverted 19-year-old son, Percy, and bring him out of his shell before he leaves for college. But awkward Percy proves to be more of a challenge than she expected, and time is running out. She has one summer to make him a man or lose it all.

The Flash was originally expected to open much bigger, and Elemental is a Pixar movie, which usually guarantees a hit. It makes sense that other studios would have steered clear of this weekend, since it’s hard to predict that both of them would have underperformed as dramatically as they did. A-list new releases are back next weekend with the release of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny on June 30.