Box Office Mojo Kemosabe.
2010's Kick-*** may have built a following on home video, but that didn't translate in to stronger attendance for the sequel. To the contrary, Kick-*** 2 only opened to $13.57 million, which is way below the first movie's $19.8 million debut. It's also only a bit ahead of fellow Universal Pictures comic book adaptation R.I.P.D., which bombed earlier this Summer with $12.7 million.
The first Kick-*** has been portrayed as a cult hit that wasn't fully appreciated during its theatrical run, though in reality Lionsgate did a great job getting the message out about it back in 2010. The movie looked fresh and fun, and did well-enough for a superhero comedy (a genre with a poor track record). By nature of being a sequel, Kick-*** 2 lost many of the first movie's advantages, and on top of that the marketing did almost nothing to differentiate it. As a result, Kick-*** 2 had a steeper drop in attendance than recent sequels like Red 2 and The Expendables 2.
Kick-*** 2's audience was 63 percent male and 58 percent under the age of 25. They awarded the movie a "B+" CinemaScore, which doesn't really give a good indication on word-of-mouth. Regardless, the first movie did have good word-of-mouth, but still plummeted coming off opening weekend; if the same thing happens for Kick-*** 2, its final total will be just over $30 million.
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