‘Bad Boys 4’ Is a Hit, but Summer Box Office Remains Down

“Bad Boys: Ride or Die” gave the box office a desperately needed jolt, but the action-comedy fourquel can’t salvage the summer season by itself.

Although the newest “Bad Boys,” reuniting Will Smith and Martin Lawrence as Miami cops, arrived on the higher end of expectations with $56 million in domestic ticket sales, the year-to-date deficit actually grew more pronounced. Heading into the weekend, ticket sales were 24% behind 2023 and now overall revenues are lagging by 26% according to Comscore.

“Bad Boys 4” isn’t to blame for the decline; analysts believe it’s the lack of enthusiasm for other titles in the marketplace. Four of the other top five releases — Sony’s animated “The Garfield Movie” ($10 million), Paramount’s fantasy comedy “IF” ($8 million), the Warner Bros. supernatural thriller and fellow newcomer “The Watchers” ($7.4 million) and Disney and 20th Century’s sequel “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes” ($5.4 million) — brought in scraps. Two of those films, “IF” and “Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes,” have been playing in theaters for four and five weekends, respectively.

So, comparisons to the same weekend in summer 2023 are tough because several movies were actively selling tickets: “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” topped the box office with $61 million, while “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” collected $55.5 million in its sophomore outing and “Disney’s “The…