Fourteen years after The Best Man, writer-director Malcolm D. Lee brought the old college friends back together for Christmas. Universal released The Best Man Holiday on November 15, 2013, with the original ensemble returning: Taye Diggs, Nia Long, Morris Chestnut, Terrence Howard, Regina Hall, Sanaa Lathan, Harold Perrineau, Monica Calhoun and Melissa De Sousa.
Expectations going in were modest. Ahead of the weekend, Box Office Mojo forecast an opening in the mid-$20 million range from just over 2,000 locations, a solid but secondary result behind Thor: The Dark World in its second weekend. Instead the comedy-drama took about $30 million and came close enough to Marvel’s $38.5 million to make the weekend a real race. The opening was more than three times the 1999 original’s $9 million debut. CBS News, citing exit data, reported that the opening audience was 87 percent African American and mostly women.
The film went on to gross about $70.5 million in North America against a reported budget of $17 million, according to The Numbers.
Much of the film is about grief, but the laughs carried it. Terrence Howard’s Quentin got most of the best lines, and Regina Hall’s Candace and Harold Perrineau’s Julian supplied many of the warmer comic moments.
Our take
Every few years Hollywood is “surprised” when a Black ensemble film over-performs. The Best Man Holiday was one of the loudest of those surprises, and it should have ended the pattern. It showed that grown-up Black audiences will turn out in large numbers for stories about friendship, faith and middle age, especially when the jokes land. In our view the outdated forecasts said more about the industry than about the film.
Sources: CBS News / AP, The Numbers, Box Office Mojo
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