Journalists can always tell when “Mean Girls” will win at the box office. Well, they can tell when you're winning.
Paramount Pictures' adaptation of the Broadway musical, based on the original 2004 film “Mean Girls,” starring Lindsay Lohan and Rachel McAdams, topped the holiday weekend domestic box office, grossing a projected $28 million at its premiere of four days, according to estimates by the measurement company Comscore.
The musical film finished well ahead of second place, the Amazon/MGM action film “The Beekeeper,” which managed to gross $16.8 million in its extended debut weekend.
“Mean Girls” performed more or less as expected based on early box office projections, which had the film grossing between $20 million and $35 million over Martin Luther King Jr. weekend.
This remake of “Mean Girls” performed slightly better than the 2004 original, which had a domestic debut of $24.4 million ($39.8 million adjusted for inflation).
Rounding out the top five at the domestic box office were Warner Bros. family film “Wonka,” which grossed $8.38 million in its fifth weekend for a North American gross of $176.1 million; Sony's romantic comedy “Anyone But You,” which earned $6.94 million in its fourth installment for a North American cume of $55.18 million; and Universal Pictures' animated film “Migration” also grossed $6.19 million in its fourth weekend for a North American total of $85.75 million.
Another new film, “The Book of Clarence,” a faith-based comedy-drama with a cast including LaKeith Stanfield, Omar Sy, RJ Cyler, David Oyelowo, Alfre Woodard and Teyana Taylor, stumbled. The Legendary Pictures production, distributed by Sony, opened with an estimated $2.6 million and finished in ninth place. The film, written and directed by Jeymes Samuel (“The Harder They Fall”), received mixed reviews, with a 68% on Rotten Tomatoes and a B CinemaScore.
Directed by Samantha Jayne and Arturo Pérez Jr., “Mean Girls,” like its previous incarnations, centers on the story of Cady Heron (Angourie Rice), a former home-schooled teenager, as she attends a new public school and has They have to learn about social dynamics, including dealing with school bully/cool girl Regina George (Reneé Rapp). Oh, and there is a lot of singing because it is a musical. The film also stars Auliʻi Cravalho, Jenna Fischer, Tina Fey, Tim Meadows, Ashley Park and Jon Hamm.
The PG-13-rated musical earned a mediocre critic score of 70% and a lukewarm audience score of 66% on review aggregation site Rotten Tomatoes. It earned a lukewarm B grade from audiences surveyed by CinemaScore.
“So why does everything seem so laborious and overworked, so frantically selfish? It has something to do with the bland quality of the songs, none of which threaten to lodge in your brain like the lines from the first film so easily do,” writes Times film critic Justin Chang in his review of adaptation.
“For every melody that opens a poignant window into a character's confusion (like 'What's Wrong with Me?', Gretchen's shaky cry for help), there seem to be at least three or four that feel noticeably padded, underscoring rhythms of the story that does not exactly cry out for a psychological elaboration. Fey's original script was, among other things, a model of narrative concision (the film ran 97 minutes compared to this one's 112), and said more with Cady's amusing voiceover than the musical can manage with a full-fledged medley. ”
Ava DuVernay's Neon film “Origin,” Bleecker Street's space thriller “ISS” and Mainframe Pictures' political horror film “Founders Day” will be widely released next week.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
