‘Good Boys’ has good showing at box office

NEW YORK — The R-rated comedy, left for dead by some Hollywood studios, again reached No.1 at the box office over the weekend thanks to the raunchy coming-of-age tale “Good Boys,” about a trio of 12-year-olds on a crude misadventure.

“Good Boys” surpassed expectations to debut with $21 million, according to studio estimates Sunday, dethroning the “Fast & Furious” spinoff “Hobbs & Shaw,” which slid to second with $14.1 million in its third weekend. Not since Melissa McCarthy’s “The Boss” came in No. 1 all the way back in April 2016 has an R-rated comedy topped the North American box office.

“This is like a unicorn sighting,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for data firm Comscore.

In recent years, R-rated horror has largely taken the place of R-rated comedy at the box office, as Hollywood has increasingly ceded the genre to TV and streaming services. But Universal Pictures, which released “Good Boys,” has kept the flame. The studio was behind “The Boss” as well as the intervening years’ highest grossing domestic comedies: 2017’s “Girls Trip” and 2018’s “Night School.”

“Good Boys” broke out of a crowded late-summer field of new releases. The weekend’s other new widely released films — the animated sequel “The Angry Birds Movie 2,” the shark attack sequel “47 Meters Down: Uncaged,” the Bruce Springsteen-inspired drama “Blinded by the Light” and Richard Linklater’s Cate Blanchett-led “Where’d You Go Bernadette” — all fizzled.

The “Good Boys” debut gave Universal, also behind “Hobbs & Shaw” its third straight weekend at No. 1 and 10th this year — second only to Disney.

With two weeks to go, the overall summer movie season is running 1.9% behind the pace of last summer.