‘Jackass Forever’ laughs its way to No 1 at box office

After living through nearly two years of a pandemic that won’t end, Americans, as it turns out, were in desperate need of a laugh.

That may explain why Paramount’s go-for-broke action comedy ‘Jackass Forever’ triumphed at the domestic box office while Roland Emmerich’s disaster epic ‘Moonfall’ turned into an epic disaster, reports Variety.

‘Jackass Forever,’ the fourth installment in the ongoing saga of projectiles to the groin, collected $23.5 million from 3,604 North American locations in its debut, landing on the higher end of expectations.

The latest ‘Jackass,’ starring Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Wee Man and other daredevils from MTV days, had been widely expected to win the weekend, but its victory is still surprising and impressive because it has been some time since a pure comedy has claimed the top spot-on box-office charts. In catapulting to first place, ‘Jackass Forever’ finally took down reigning champion ‘Spider-Man: No Way Home,’ which spent six of the last eight weeks at No. 1.

‘Jackass Forever’ has been a hit with critics, notching a solid 85% on Rotten Tomatoes and ‘B+’ CinemaScore from audience members. Ticket buyers were overwhelmingly male at 68%, while 25% were over the age of 35 and 67% were between 18 and 34. The breakdown indicates that ‘Jackass,’ which began as an MTV television series more than two decades ago and continued with three other R-rated reckless prank films, has enduring popularity among its initial fanbase .

‘Moonfall,’ the weekend’s other new nationwide release, has less to celebrate. The science-fiction catastrophe film crash-landed on the lower end of projections, bringing in $10.1 million from 3,446 venues. Those ticket sales are potentially problematic because ‘Moonfall’ cost $140 million to produce, making it one of the most expensive independent films in history.

‘No Way Home’ is just $11.1 million away from unseating James Cameron’s 2009 blockbuster ‘Avatar’ ($760 million) as the third-biggest domestic release in history. At the global box office, where ‘Avatar’ holds the all-time record with $2.802 billion, ‘Spider-Man’ is holding steady in sixth place with $1.77 billion. Since ‘No Way Home’ hasn’t been granted a release date in China, the world’s biggest theatrical market, it’ll have trouble cracking the coveted $2 billion mark, a threshold that only five films have ever crossed.