All the pre-release controversies in the world won’t keep folks from a movie that they genuinely want to see.
Kevin Hart and Bryan Cranston in ‘The Upside’STX and David Lee
With the always important “rank doesn’t matter” caveat (it’s how much a movie earns, not where it ends up on the charts), The Upside just gave STX Entertainment its first number one debut. The Neil Burger-directed film, starring Kevin Hart, Bryan Cranston and Nicole Kidman, earned a genuinely impressive $19.7 million this weekend. That’s not far off from Hart’s more explicitly comedic vehicles like Sony’s The Wedding Ringer ($22m in 2015). It’s no Ride Along ($41m in 2014) or even Night School ($27m last September), but this is more of an adult-skewing drama. Moreover, Tiffany Haddish and Ice Cube > Cranston and Kidman in terms of “butts in the seats” draws.
By the way, Kidman is having a hell of a weekend, as Aquaman just topped $1 billion worldwide and Destroyer is… okay, that’s not the kind of movie that makes a ton of money, but it has still earned $426,000 entirely on her star turn. But back to The Upside. It is a remake of a blockbuster 2012 French drama about a wealthy white paraplegic who hires a comparatively poor and down-on-his-luck black ex-con to provide day-to-day care. The François Cluzet/Omar Sy drama earned an obscene $426 million worldwide (including $166m in France and $79m in Germany) to become, back then anyway, the biggest-grossing non-English-language grosser ever at the global box office.
As noted yesterday, there was a skewed irony of the film essentially being kind of movie about racism and class disparity which allows for rich white folks to feel good about themselves that is commonly associated with American Oscar-bait.
