Melissa McCarthy’s Life of the Party earned $18.5 million on its debut weekend. That’s a decent-enough 3.77x multiplier (Mother’s Day inflates the Sunday grosses for female-targeted flicks) for the $30m WB/New Line comedy. Like most of McCarthy’s comedies, especially the ones she makes with her husband Ben Falcone, this got mixed-negative reviews heading into the weekend. The Will Packer production earned a solid $16.5m in its debut weekend, or way above the $9.9m Fri-Sun opening weekend of Taraji P. Henson’s (R-rated and admittedly inferior) Proud Mary back in January. But even if it doesn’t, a $16.5 million debut with poor reviews and zero to sell beyond its top-billed star means that Union is something of a movie star.

Source: Forbes May 13, 2018 15:56 UTC