Crazy Rich Asians opened with around $25.2 million over the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend, which by itself would be a big win for the $30m romantic comedy/family melodrama. But it opened on a Wednesday, where it earned $8.8m over those first two days. As such, the Jon M. Chu-directed adaptation of the Kevin Kwan novel earned around $34m over its Wed-Sun debut. This is a huge win for both those involved in the film, those aching for this sort of onscreen representation, for Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. and for Hollywood in general. It’s yet another example of how audiences still flock to event movies even if the definition of an “event movie” has changed.
The film earned $5 million on Wednesday and $10m on Saturday (its biggest day and a 37% jump from Friday) for a $33m long weekend, That’s an obscene 6.8x weekend multiplier. For reference, that’s leggier than DreamWorks/Walt Disney’s The Help (6.5x for a $38m Wed-Sun frame in 2011) which went on to earn $169.7m (and snag several Oscar nominations/wins). Does that mean Crazy Rich Asians, which has earned mostly rave reviews and white-hot buzz over the weekend, is on a similar path? Way too early to say (especially with that new “popular movies” category in play), but there is a long history of crowd-pleasing comedies opening in mid-August and legging it out accordingly.
If the movie plays like Vacation ($55 million from a $21m Wed-Sun debut), we’re looking at a $92m domestic total. That would still be solid (it’s triple the budget) and would still mean that the film wouldn’t have to rely on overseas audiences to make money/justify a sequel. That comparative frontloading (see also: Sony’s Superbad and Paramount/Viacom Inc.’s Tropic Thunder) would surprise me, both because of the buzz and because big movies aimed at adult women tend to leg out because there are still, in 2018, so few of them. Heck, even if it drops dead next weekend and crawls to $75m, it’ll still have outgrossed the likes of Game Night and Blockers among this year’s successful straight-ahead comedies.
The “positive” comparisons, The 40-Year Old Virgin ($109 million from a $21m Fri-Sun launch in 2005), Trainwreck ($110m from a $30m Fri-Sun debut in 2015), We’re the Millers ($150m from a $35m Wed-Sun launch in 2013) and The Help, paint a much rosier picture. The Trainwreck comparison, which works since it was the last time a rom-com opened above $20m before this weekend, puts Crazy Rich Asians at around $110m. But if it plays like the mid-August sensations of 2005, 2011 and 2013, it’ll end up anywhere from $131m to $158m domestic. That may be pie-in-the-sky optimism, but this movie is the sort whose legs grew over the weekend as word-of-mouth spread.
You’re going to get a deluge of positive media coverage over the next week or two. And while much of that will center around the film “proving that audiences of all stripes will flock to a mainstream rom-com centering on Asians (and mostly played by Western Asian actors), it’s just as important for the industry overall that this sort of movie didn’t die on the vine. After all, the producers famously turned down huge Netflix money so that they could make a point about theatrical success. But, pardon the cliche, it was really Hollywood “on trial.”
Had the film failed, it would have been a far greater point about the theatrical financial potential of what is an old-school studio programmer in a Netflix-and-Chill era. My issues with many of Netflix’s original movies notwithstanding, be they would-be blockbusters or Hollywood discards, they have been kicking butt all year in the realm of romantic comedy. The likes of Set It Up, The Kissing Booth and this weekend’s To All the Boys I Have Loved (also featuring an Asian-American family at is center, natch) have shown the streaming giant’s ability to tap into a neglected genre and create approximations of the genuine Hollywood article.
The failure of Crazy Rich Asians wouldn’t have meant the end of mainstream genre fare for/from Asian-Americans. But it would have guaranteed that the likes of Crazy Rich Asians 2 or what-have-you would have gone to Netflix. And it wouldn’t be because Hollywood didn’t believe in the commercial value of Asian-American filmmakers, but rather because Asian American filmmakers (and other underrepresented voices slowly chipping at the proverbial glass ceiling) would have had a darn good reason not to believe in the old Hollywood system. Ditto any and all mainstream romantic comedies, even if their absence from the big-screens were entirely the fault of systemic bias and declarations of cultural irrelevancy.
Of note, this boffo debut for the Constance Wu/Henry Golding flick means A) a little more free press for A Simple Favor on Sept. 14 (where Golding next co-stars with Anna Kendrick and plays Blake Lively’s husband… he’s having a rough month) and B) more validity to the notion that big, crowd-pleasing “party movies” about/for women aren’t box office poison but indeed qualify as a safe box office bet. Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. sold the flick as a “girl’s night out”/date night pick for general audiences. It was sold as a bawdy, mostly-stress free flick where really rich women (and men) just enjoyed themselves for 115-minutes give-or-take a few vital conflicts along the way. In that sense, it’s merely the next entry in a potent sub-genre after Bad Moms, Girls Trip, Book Club and Ocean’s 8.
It’s also another feather in Warner Bros.’ marketing cap. This is the Dream Factory at their best, taking non-tentpole flicks like American Sniper, Magic Mike and It and turning them into big openers. And if all goes well, then WB will have created two new franchises in two weeks, with Crazy Rich Asians (which has two literary sequels) and The Meg (which has five sequels with a sixth allegedly on the way). Or, come what may, they could always do a Meg-a Rich Asians cross-over spectacular, where Jason Statham and Li Binging have to team up with Constance Wu and Henry Golding (and Awkwafina) to save their relationship and kill more giant sharks. Laugh all you want, but you’d watch the hell out of that. So would I.
