Girls Trip
On paper, the premise for Girls Trip sounds like a tired concept: a bunch of friends, who’ve grown apart, embark on a trip where they rediscover themselves and their friendship. Cliché as it comes, right? But in the execution, Malcolm D. Lee hit a serious slam dunk that turned out to be one of 2017’s best comedies.
With an all-star cast featuring Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Tiffany Haddish, and Jada Pinkett Smith, plus a side-splittingly funny script, Girls Trip pulled in the audience as it made $138.6 million from a budget of under $30 million. For a lower-budget comedy flick, that’s nothing to sniff at.
In a year that saw numerous comedies failing to bring the laughs (and money) to the cinema, Girls Trip proved to be the exception to the rule. Heck, even Time magazine named it one of its best films of 2017, so there’s that accolade, too.
Despicable Me 3
You’d think by now that the audience would grow tired of Despicable Me and the annoying Minions, but no. It seems like this franchise continues to grow stronger and stronger as Despicable Me 3 passed the $1 billion mark, making it an absolute juggernaut at the box office.
While we’re sure that Universal Pictures hoped it would do as well as the previous two films and maybe luck out like Minions did, this box office return did incredible numbers and became the third highest-grossing film of the year. It did okay in the U.S. with just over $264 million, but the international audience powered the pic to even greater heights.
With so much money on the table, it should come as no surprise that there’s yet another Despicable Me sequel in development.
Tell us, which box office hits surprised you in 2017? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below.
