Box Office: ‘Mean Girls’ to Dominate Martin Luther King. Jr. Weekend

Mean Girls should do nice business in its box office debut.

Paramount’s movie adaptation of the Broadway musical that was in turn based on the 2004 big screen teen comedy is expected to open to as much as $30 million over the long Martin Luther King Jr. holiday weekend.

That would mark a great start for a studio film that cost a relatively modest $36 million to produce before marketing, not to mention a musical, a genre which has become an endangered species (Wonka aside).

The musical arrives on the big screen 20 years after the Lindsay Lohan-led cult classic Mean Girls, which was directed by Mark Waters and written by Tina Fey. Fey returned to pen the script for the new film, which stars Angourie Rice, Reneé Rapp, Auli’i Cravalho, Bebe Wood and Chris Briney. Fey and Tim Meadows also reprise their roles from the 2004 movie.

Female-fueled films — look no further than Barbie or Anyone But You — have been doing impressive business at the box office, and Mean Girls hopes to be the latest example. Younger females in particular are known for being repeat viewers, just as fanboys are.

The original Mean Girls sports a Rotten Tomatoes critics’ score of 84 percent; the score for the new film is currently 74 percent from the first 53 reviews.

Mean Girls is hardly the only new title on the crowded MLK holiday marquee. Amazon/MGM’s The Beekeeper, the latest action pic starring Jason Statham, hopes to serve as counterprogramming for men and is tipped to open in the mid to high teens.

Legendary Pictures’ and Sony’s biblical satirical drama The Book of Clarence, is tracking to open in the single digits, despite a star-packed ensemble cast that includes LaKeith Stanfield, RJ Cyler, Omar Sy, Alfre Woodard, David Oyelowo and James McAvoy. Jaymes Samuel directs the Jesus period pic, with Jay-Z producing.

Disney and Pixar are also in the mix this weekend, bringing Soul to the big screen for the first time. It is the first of three Pixar films that premiered exclusively on Disney+ during the pandemic that are now getting a theatrical release as a way of making sure exhibitors have enough product as the content pipeline slows in the wake of Hollywood’s historic labor strikes. It’s also an opportunity to promote the trailer for Pixar’s 2024 summer tentpole Inside Out 2.

There was no major marketing campaign for Soul‘s theatrical run, and the movie will remain available on Disney+. Turning Red hits cinemas Feb. 9, followed by Luca on March 22.

As the awards race heats up, Amazon and MGM have double duty this weekend when expanding filmmaker Cord Jefferson‘s American Fiction into roughly 600 theaters. The critically acclaimed film, adapted from Percival Everett’s satirical novel Erasure, stars Jeffrey Wright as a frustrated author facing the Black artist’s dilemma. Sterling K. Brown, Leslie Uggams, Tracee Ellis Ross, Issa Rae and Adam Brody co-star.