Box Office: ‘Smile’ Earns $2 Million in Previews, ‘Bros’ Behind With $500K

Joel Kim Booster revisited a critique lobbed at his movie Fire Island while promoting Billy Eichner‘s gay rom-com Bros.

James Gunn‘s attempt 20 years ago was shot down. Clips from the upcoming movie, which hit digital on Tuesday, show Velma, voiced by Kate Micucci, swooning over costume designer Coco Diablo (Myrna Velasco of “DC Super Hero Girls”) — her glasses steam up — and getting an enormous, goofy grin when Coco touches her shoulder.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Billy Eichner’s “Bros” made history as the first gay rom-com to be given a wide theatrical release by a major studio, as well as the first with an all-openly LGBTQ cast. From the nightclub where Eichner’s Bobby meets and falls in love with Luke McFarlane’s buff Aaron, to the LGBTQ+ Museum grand opening, the Big Apple love story features several amazing sets — as well as a carefully curated DVD shelf. While production for “Bros” was originally meant to take place in Buffalo, N.Y, the pandemic thwarted plans, and with a new tax credit incentive, New Jersey became the stand-in for the rom-com (with a few scenes shot on the streets of New York and Provincetown). Sitting down with Variety, writer-director Nicholas Stoller and production designer Lisa Myers share insight into the film’s key sets.

Bros, tweeting that “straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up” for the movie during its opening weekend.The Universal film — marketed as the first gay romantic comedy released by a major Hollywood studio — took in a disappointing $4.8 million on its opening weekend, with ticket sales being especially low in the Midwest and the South, reports The Hollywood Reporter.“That’s just the world we live in, unfortunately. Even with glowing reviews, great Rotten Tomatoes scores, an A CinemaScore etc, straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for Bros.

There’s a scene in Billy Eichner‘s Bros that you won’t be seeing in theaters.

Zack Sharf Billy Eichner’s “Bros” nearly featured a “$30,000 butt rig,” director Nicholas Stoller recently confirmed to Entertainment Weekly. The device, first teased by cast member Luke Macfarlane as a “very expensive prop,” was used to simulate rimming during one of the film’s sex scenes. However, the butt rig was left on the cutting room floor. “We were going to shoot a rim job moment, but then ‘The White Lotus’ beat us to the punch, so we cut that,” Eichner added, referring to the viral sex scene in the Emmy-winning HBO series. The “$30,000 butt rig” was used during an extended sex scene between Aaron (Macfarlane) and Bobby (Eichner) in which the characters passionately embrace each other’s sexual quirks. Macfarlane said “two puppeteers” operated the butt rig off camera.

Billy Eichner is on the defense after the underwhelming results of Bros at the box office. The actor is clapping back at Twitter trolls that are using the performance of the romantic comedy at the movie theaters to attack the quality of his work.

Billy Eichner’s Universal-backed comedy “Bros” flopped at the box office during its opening weekend with a $4.8 million bow, about half of the $8 million to $10 million that the studio projected. Eichner, in a now viral tweet, claimed that straight people not showing up to an LGBTQ comedy was a driving force behind “Bros” underperformance. “Even with glowing reviews, great Rotten Tomatoes scores, an A CinemaScore, etc., straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up for ‘Bros,'” Eichner wrote. “And that’s disappointing but it is what it is.” Eichner is certainly correct that some straight moviegoers weren’t interested in the material, while homophobia about two men falling in love also likely figured in. During a recent trip to a multiplex in Georgia, for instance, this writer saw a group of men being openly homophobic by mocking the “Bros” poster for featuring a guy putting his hand on another guy’s butt. However, the $4.8 million opening for “Bros” is so low that it also means many LGBTQ viewers didn’t show up to see the comedy in theaters either. So why did “Bros” disappoint?

Billy Eichner has THOUGHTS on his debut film Bros’ low box office numbers!

TMZ, and they show several inches of standing water filling most of the ground floor. In addition, portions of the ceiling caved in and have significant water damage.

took to Twitter to express his disappointment over the dire numbers with a controversial take that quickly garnered backlash.“Last night I snuck in and sat in the back of a sold out theater playing ‘Bros’ in LA. The audience howled with laughter start to finish, burst into applause at the end, and some were wiping away tears as they walked out. It was truly magical.

Sasha Urban editor After a low opening turnout in theaters for LGBTQ rom-com “Bros,” writer and star Billy Eichner wrote on Twitter Sunday that it was “disappointing” that “straight people, especially in certain parts of the country, just didn’t show up.” Dot-Marie Jones, who co-stars in the film, echoed Eichner’s sentimentsSunday evening at the Best in Drag Show, an annual parody drag pageant that functions as a charity benefit for people living with HIV/AIDS, and at which Jones was serving on the panel of judges.     “There’s so much heart and so many wonderful good laughs in this [movie],” Jones told Variety at the Orpheum Theatre in Downtown Los Angeles. “I don’t know if it’s because it’s, you know, LGBTQ. It’s not contagious — fuckin’ go see a movie, you know what I mean? It’s crazy.”

Bros, touted as the first mainstream Hollywood studio-backed gay rom-com, has opened to a less than enthusiastic response at the US Box office.Variety reported that Bros debuted at number four and had grossed $4.8 million in its opening weekend – half the collections projected by the studio. Universal had expected a $8 to $10 million opening for the Judd Apatow-produced film directed by Nicholas Stoller and starring Billy Eichner and Luke Macfarlane.Before the movie was released, homophobes had review bombed the movie with low ratings.

Billy Eichner is speaking out in response to his movie Bros‘ disappointing debut at the box office.

Billy Eichner is weighing in on the debut of his film, and reflecting on why he thinks it didn't manage to rake in huge returns despite a stellar critical response.«Last night I snuck in and sat in the back of a sold out theater playing BROS in LA. The audience howled with laughter start to finish, burst into applause at the end, and some were wiping away tears as they walked out,» Eichner write, as part of a series of tweets, on Sunday. «It was truly magical.  Really.

Billy Eichner is getting the box office results of his movie Bros and although the film is underperforming, he’s “proud” of the work he did on the big screen.

“Bros” did not bring big audiences out to the theatre, and its star thinks he knows why.

“Bros,” the Billy Eichner-fronted film tumbled at the box office on opening weekend. And Eichner – who also co-wrote the film with director Nicholas Stoller – puts the blame on straight people not showing up.“Rolling Stone already has ‘Bros’ on the list of the best comedies of the 21st century.

Brent Lang Executive Editor Paramount’s “Smile” debuted to a sizzling $22 million, easily topping the domestic box office. The horror film beat out the weekend’s other new wide release, Universal’s LGBTQ romantic comedy “Bros,” which landed in fourth with a paltry $4.8 million debut. “Smile” ranks as one of the better original horror debuts of the year, beating out 20th Century Studios’ “Barbarian” ($10 million) and Sony’s “The Invitation” ($7 million). As the box office enters October, the horror genre will continue to take center stage with Universal’s “Halloween Ends” releasing in two weeks and hoping to cash in on the excitement for thrills and chills. The box office result for “Smile” is a frighteningly good haul, seeing as it cost Paramount a measly $17 million to produce. The company used some clever marketing tactics this week by strategically placing paid actors, with huge, creepy smiles plastered on their faces, behind home plate during televised Major League Baseball games. Social media users quickly noticed the unsettling fans, who wore “Smile” t-shirts, when the cameras zoomed in on batters stepping up to the plate.

They say that as fast things change, they stay the same.

according to IMDB’s Box Office Mojo.The feature film debut from writer and director Parker Finn was called a film with a “highly effective creep factor,” by Variety.It is predicted to be grinning all the way to a $19 million dollar opening weekend,” according to Deadline.Moving down a notch to second place from the top slot last week was “Don’t Worry Darling,” with $2.4 million in sales. The firm, which cost $35 million to make, according to Forbes, has netted $27.9 million domestically and $11 million internationally.Directed by Olivia Wilde, the 1950s-set thriller was “mid to poorly reviewed,” and is forecast to bring in just $7.2 million on its second weekend in theaters, according to Collider.

Jazz Tangcay Artisans Editor Billy Eichner didn’t just write, produce and star in “Bros” — he also sings in it. The rom-com, in theaters now, follows the courtship between Bobby (Eichner) and the hunky lawyer Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), who meet at a launch party for a new dating app called Zellweger. Yes, named after the actress. Award-winning composer Marc Shaiman was brought on board to thread together the film’s score as the two characters stumble towards love, and out of love, and into love again.   Shaiman credits Eichner with the song idea for the big ballad of “Love Is Not Love.”

J. Kim Murphy “Smile” has something grin about this weekend. The creeper is projected to land a $19 million debut from 3,645 locations. It’s a fantastic start for the genre film, which carries a modest $17 million production budget. Compared to other original horror entries this year, Universal’s supernatural kidnap thriller “The Black Phone” kicked off with $23 million while 20th Century Studios’ “Barbarian” opened to $10 million. “Smile” landed a mildly positive “B-” grade through research firm Cinema Score, though such a figure is standard for a horror release. The film has drawn good buzz with solid reviews, scoring a 79% from top critics on review aggregation website Rotten Tomatoes. Variety‘s chief film critic Owen Gleiberman praised the film in his review, writing that it “sets up nearly everything — its highly effective creep factor, its well-executed if familiar shock tactics, its interlaced theme of trauma and suicide — before the opening credits.”

Luke Macfarlane is one of the most recognizable faces on the Hallmark Channel, but now he’s hitting it big with his new movie Bros!

Check your local listings. While a streaming release date has not yet been announced, “Bros” will eventually be streaming on Peacock since it’s a Universal Pictures release.

Paramount’s horror movie Smile struck up $2M in Thursday night previews that started at 7 p.m., a figure that’s just above M. Night Shyamalan’s Old from summer 2021, which did $1.5M in its previews, and just under Universal/Blumhouse’s Black Phone Thursday previews which were $3M in June.

eerily grinning fans at a baseball game or Eichner running down New York City streets with Paul Rudd and a pack of lesbians. For a comparison for “Smile,” Universal and Blumhouse’s “The Black Phone” from this summer, another original horror film, managed $3 million in its Thursday previews before opening to $23.6 million.

Billy Eichner‘s highly anticipated rom-com movie Bros is finally in theaters and everyone should be heading to their local cinema to check it out this weekend!

A heartfelt, hilarious classic Hollywood-style romantic comedy, Bros (★★★★☆) doesn’t screw around with the formula of forebears like When Harry Met Sally or You’ve Got Mail. Rather, the movie — produced by Judd Apatow, directed by Nicholas Stoller (Forgetting Sarah Marshall), and co-written by Stoller and star Billy Eichner — delivers fresh takes on tropes that worked for those films, while trafficking in jokes and situations they never touched.With tart dialogue and earnest intent, Bros leans into the romance of the giddy first kiss, and the determined dash across town to declare one’s love right now in front of an audience of awww-ing friends who will dance out the scene in a joyful montage.The filmmakers’ attention to genre detail includes layering Bros with that rare, underrated quality of a good romantic comedy: a believable resistance to romance. To stir the pot, somebody or something has to be standing in the way of happily ever after.Here, the culprits are our lead pair of lovebirds, commitment-shy New Yorkers Bobby (Eichner) and Aaron (Luke Macfarlane), who at least commit to a text-assisted dance of hooking up and sort of dating, after meeting at a club.Their rocky progress towards a climax, or several climaxes, follows a familiar rom-com path, but with both the rom and the com rendered through the specific lens of Bobby and Aaron’s modern gay experience.

Billy Eichner and Luke MacFarlane put on their most colorful suits for the premiere of their movie Bros at the Regal LA Live on Wednesday (September 28) in Los Angeles.

There might be a box office surprise this weekend in Paramount’s horror movie Smile.

Billy Eichner channeled years of watching those films -- either not seeing himself reflected onscreen or always pushed to the sidelines -- into, the hilarious new R-rated gay rom-com co-written by and starring the former host of . Ahead of its theatrical debut this weekend, ET’s Rachel Smith tested Eichner, who plays Bobby, and his co-star, Luke Macfarlane, who shares the screen as his love interest, Aaron, on just how well they know each other after making the film. So, who is pickier about who they date? “Billy,” Macfarlane says, while Eichner pushes back and says, “[Luke]’ll day anything… He found three guys when we were walking into this bar.” OK, then who has the bigger… A-lister stored in their phone? “I thought you were going to go somewhere totally different with that,” Macfarlane reacts with laughter. “Totally different with that question.” That said, he says that Eichner “definitely” has more stars in his contacts, while making reference to his Emmy-nominated variety series.

Hallmark Christmas movies, and I’ve always enjoyed Macfarlane’s work as a charming romantic lead in them, but “Bros” offers the kind of complexity and shading (to say nothing of humor) that Hallmark never could. Anyone coming into this film only knowing Macfarlane for his cozy cable movies will leave with a new appreciation of this versatile actor’s wheelhouse.Cinematographer Brandon Trost (“Can You Ever Forgive Me?”) bathes the film in a romantic-comedy glow, whether Bobby and Aaron are falling for each other in Manhattan or in Provincetown, and overall, “Bros” harkens back to old-school rom-coms and their more recent iterations.

Rebecca Rubin Film and Media Reporter After years of declarations about the death of the romantic comedy, Sandra Bullock and Channing Tatum’s recent commercial hit “The Lost City” proved there’s still a place on the big screen for meet-cute stories. Now, comedian and actor Billy Eichner is taking a stab at the feel-good genre with “Bros,” an R-rated romantic comedy that opens in 3,300 North American theaters on Friday. The movie, from Universal Pictures, is aiming to generate $8 million to $10 million in its opening weekend. It’s not a huge number, but the film carries a modest $22 million production budget. “Bros” is debuting in theaters alongside Paramount’s R-rated chiller “Smile,” which is projected to cast a toothy glow over the domestic box office charts with $16 million to $20 million. That’s a stellar result given that it only cost the studio $17 million to make.

The most important revelation in my interview with TS Madison wasn’t about something that occurred on the set of her new film “Bros.” It wasn’t related to her inclusion in Beyoncé’s celebrated house music album “Renaissance,” either. No, somehow, the queer community icon, reality television force, and social media star is not repped by an agent.

Brent Lang Executive Editor “Bros” is another R-rated, envelope-pushing look at a man in a state of arrested development from Nicholas Stoller. It’s the kind of look at male neurosis, usually the kind of mania the pops up a decade shy of mid-life crisis time, that has been the director’s stock in trade in comedies like “Forgetting Sarah Marshall,” “Get Him to the Greek” and “Neighbors.” But this film has an important twist. It has an entirely LGBTQ cast and centers on two gay men with serious commitment issues — a stretch for Stoller, who is heterosexual. So he turned to Billy Eichner, who he knew from working together on “Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising” and “Friends From College,” to help him fashion an authentically queer “meet cute.” “Bros,” the culmination of a multi-year writing process that Stoller likens to therapy (“making a movie like this is a lot like ‘Prince of Tides,’ he says). When it debuts on Friday, “Bros” will make history as the first major studio LGBTQ rom-com to open exclusively in theaters.