On September 1st, the announcement was made that Paramount would be delaying the release of its remaining 2021 films, including the Tom Cruise starrers Top Gun: Maverick (moved from November 2021 to May 2022) and Mission Impossible 7 (from May 2022 to September 2022). Somewhat lost in the hoopla of the Cruise pics news was that Jackass Forever, the fourquel of the popular Jackass franchise, would also move from its October 22, 2021 date all the way til February 4, 2022.
Now a month removed from that announcement and with the clarity that only time provides, we can definitively say this to the folks at Paramount: You’ve made a mistake in delaying Jackass Forever til next February. But they still have time to course correct and do the right thing for the box office, for the Jackass legacy, and for their bottom line— and that’s by immediately moving Jackass Forever back onto the 2021 slate, with our official guidance that the new date should be Friday October 29, 2021.
And here’s why it’s time for #JackassForeverNow
1) Fall Season is Jackass Season: In our lifetime we’ve had three proper Jackass films and the spin-off Jackass presents: Bad Grandpa. All four of those films have been hits, and all have opened in either late-September or October. Here’s the stats: Jackass: The Movie opened on October 25, 2002 with an opening weekend of $22 million and a domestic cube of $64 million. It was followed by Jackass: Number Two on Sept 22, 2006 with a split of $29/$72 mil, Jackass 3D on October 15, 2010 with $50/$117 mil, and Bad Grandpa on Oct 25, 2013 with $32/$102 mil. In a world as unpredictable and chaotic as we live in, almost nothing in life has provided more certainty than the release schedule (and success) of the Jackass franchise. These movies open in the heart of the Fall, and they do baffa bobbo at the B.O. every time out. Originally Jackass Forever was set to follow that exact pattern with its Oct 22, 2021 release date, but now Paramount has thrown one of the greatest patterns in box office history to the wayside. This is the ultimate case of trying to fix what’s not broken, and in the process they run the risk of confusing the hardcore Jackass fanbase. These fans are used to heading to theaters in October to watch Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Chris “Party Boy” Pontius and the crew injure themselves for the audience’s enjoyment. At this point it’s an October tradition as ingrained in Americana as the Halloween holiday itself. If Paramount owned the rights to Halloween, would they just move THAT to February? Perhaps, and if so I guarantee most kids would forget to go trick-or-treating in the dead of winter just as many Jackass fans will forget to head to the theaters in February to see the latest stunts of Preston Lacy and Wee-Man. The Jackass audience is an aging fanbase— high school and college kids in the early 2000s, so forty-somethings now— and therefore “forgetfulness” must be factored into any marketing plan. Why attempt to make this aging fanbase have to learn something new, rather than rely on their sense memory of “It’s October, I go see Preston Lacy on the big screen.”
And if you think we’re not giving enough credit to the Jackass audience, let us not forget the dismal performance of Action Point, the Johnny Knoxville/Chris “Party Boy” Pontius two-hander which Paramount released on June 1, 2018. While not an official part of the Jackass Cinematic Universe, it did feature two of the franchise’s main stars performing real-life stunts onscreen. This highly-promoted JCU-adjacent comedy opened to a disastrous $2.3 million on it’s way to a $5 mil total. Sure it lacked the Jackass brand name and the presence of regulars Steve-O and Preston Lacy, but the biggest difference was the release date. They tried to open a Jackass film in the Summer and the fans did not follow. October, it’s clear, is Jackass Month.
2) The Jackass Fans, and Cast, Aren’t Getting Any Younger: As mentioned above the original fanbase for Jackass have aged into their 40s, while the Jackass cast themselves are pushing 50. While most would consider that middle-aged, we must realize that the Jackass crew and their fans are living harder years than the average person, and therefore it’s a dangerous gamble to bet that they could make it all the way til a February 2022 release. Johnny Knoxville, Steve-O, Party Boy— they may look to be in great shape, but they’ve spent the majority of their lives smashing their nut sacs, paper-cutting their toes, eating hot wasabi, and generally punishing themselves to create these blockbuster (when released in the Fall) movies. Meanwhile the Jackass fanbase destroyed their own bodies with copycat stunts and ungodly intakes of Mountain Dew. Man is mortal, and the mortality of the potential Jackass audience is not something Paramount should have taken lightly. Every day that this film sits on the shelf is another day that a potential Jackass Forever ticket buyer succumbs to Energy Drink-induced heart failure or to injuries sustained at a 2003 Vans Warped Tour. Paramount needs as many living Jackass fans as possible on opening weekend, and as many Jackass cast members in good health to promote the film. Therefore they MUST get the film out ASAP, rather than expecting Preston Lacy (and the fanbase who idolized him) to hold up all the way into next February.
3) There’s Plenty of Room in the Schedule: Much has been made about how packed the month of October has become with major releases Venom: Let There Be Carnage opening this past weekend to a gonzo $90 mil, soon to be followed by the James Bond entry No Time to Die on October 8, Halloween Kills and The Last Duel on October 15, and Dune on October 22. So maybe Paramount looks at that lineup and thinks that there’s no room for Jackass in October anyways. WRONG. First off, we all need to come to grips with the idea that Dune is going to be a box-office letdown on Oct 22, most likely more in line with the opening weekends of 2012’s John Carter ($30 mil) and 2018’s Blade Runner 2049 ($32 mil) than what Venom Let There Be Carnage, No Time to Die, or Halloween Kills will do in the weeks prior. The full “Dune is going to be a disappointment” talk is an article for another day, but under that assumption there is an opening for another blockbuster to squeeze into the marketplace. And then when we look at Friday Oct 29, we see a pretty light weekend with just the Edgar Wright quirkfest Last Night in Soho and the Keri Russell starrer Antlers set to open. Aside from the surprise legginess of 2017’s Baby Driver, Wright’s box office history has been spotty at best, and Russell has never been a movie star. Neither of those films should be expected to do much, and the second weekend of Dune could be a complete non-entity, which makes that Oct 29 date a potential goldmine to drop a blockbuster such as Jackass Forever. Plus that’s HALLOWEEN WEEKEND. While Halloween Kills is certain to get a nice bump from the gorehounds, what would be a better way for scare-starved audiences to get their scream fixes than to watch Preston Lacy and the boys engage in dangerous stunts and pranks in their 50s? Jackass Forever would fill some major holes in the October schedule by providing a needed blockbuster to follow the inevitable Dune disappointment, and to be the horror-comedy that thrills audiences over the Halloween weekend.
4) The Buzz of a Last Minute Drop-in Would Be Incredible: While yearlong marketing campaigns have traditionally been the norm for blockbuster Hollywood movies, what audiences crave nowadays are surprises. They want surprise midnight album drops, surprise stingers at the end of movies, surprise reveals on The Masked Singer. So what better way to surprise the moviegoing audience than announce that Jackass Forever is actually opening in a few weeks? It’d be a no-brainer to simply drop stars such as Johnny Knoxville or Steve-O or Preston Lacy from a Jackass Forever billboard onto a bed of nails, and when they land they announce that “this isn’t the only surprise drop. Jackass Forever on October 29.” The excitement from that surprise alone would be worth more than a year of advanced hype. Fans would be grateful that they don’t have to wait (survive) until February, and the ink-stained hacks starving for any morsel of entertainment happenings would be happy to make a meal of such big news. It would be viral news that puts a scrappy production like Jackass Forever in the same category of buzz as a highly branded Bond film.
5) The Current State of the Domestic Box-Office is Healthy: When Paramount moved Jackass Forever and their 2021 slate at the end of the summer, it was a reaction to rising COVID numbers and declining box-office numbers. The Delta variant was rising just as big summer movies such as In The Heights, The Suicide Squad, Space Jam: A New Legacy and others were falling at the domestic box office. Paramount saw the landscape and assumed that by October the domestic box office would be cratering and there’d be no way to make significant money with the new Jackass release. We know now that they acted hastily. They of course were ignoring the historic performance of August’s Free Guy, the Ryan Reynolds phenomenon which has legged out to a current $118 mil (and counting) on a $28 mil opening. Even more glaringly they acted right before the incredible showing of Shang-Chi which opened on Sept 3 (just two days before the Paramount announcements) to a whopping $75 mil on route to a current total of $207 mil domestic. Then of course we just had the Venom Let There Be Carnage explosion of $90 mil, and are only hours away from the latest Bond film opening anywhere from $70-100 domestic. The fact is that movies, especially on the high end, are performing as well now as they would be expected to in ANY time. Shang-Chi and Venom 2 are earning exactly if not more than we would have pegged them to even in non-COVID times. Free Guy is a runaway hit for a film that pre-pandemic seemed like a risky bet. Yes, prospects are still iffy for mid-level dramas and art films, but for the popcorn blockbusters the domestic landscape appears to be back to normal, especially when a “day and date” streaming option isn’t at play. Jackass Forever could open right now and everyone should feel confident that the current theatrical landscape would not be a hinderance. Much like the other blockbusters mentioned in this section, if fans want to pay for the new Jackass movie in theaters, they’d do so today as much as they would have two years ago.
6) International Box-Office Doesn’t Matter for Jackass Forever: As the pandemic keeps international movie markets in flux, the potential worldwide earnings for films released now are still down. Therefore it’s understandable that Paramount flinched and moved its two Tom Cruise plays further down the road, when (hopefully) more people worldwide are vaccinated and therefore the international movie markets can get back to normal. Those are high-budgeted films that absolutely need to clean up at the worldwide box office to turn a maximum profit. Cruise is an worldwide—perhaps intergalactic—star, and the splits for his films are such that international box office often exceeds what they make domestically. Johnny Knoxville and the Jackass films do not have such issues. The Jackass movies make the vast majority of their dollars domestically, with the MOST international-skewed split being Jackass 3D at $117 mil domestic vs $54 mil foreign. These are moderately budgeted films that earn most of their kitty in North America, so even if Europe, Asia and the rest are not at full moviegoing strength it basically doesn’t matter for Jackass Forever. Preston Lacy is a major star in America, but unlike Tom Cruise he’s never meant much overseas, and Paramount needs to accept that and schedule these films accordingly.
7) Paramount Needs A Hit Right NOW: Paramount started the 2021 Summer Movie Season with a bang with their brilliantly handled release of A Quiet Place Part 2 ($47 mil opening, $160 domestic total). But since then they’ve only had the middling success of the Paw Patrol movie and the failed rollout of their Paramount Plus streamer. They’ve spent the last year selling off most of their big movies to streamers and moving their Tom Cruise franchises into next year. They’re a studio in desperate need of a splashy hit to seem relevant, lest they turn into the proverbial corpse in the desert being eaten by buzzards. A major studio cannot survive on sales-to-streamers alone. They need a HIT, and a hit right now. Jackass Forever is that hit.
It’s obvious by now that Paramount absolutely should move Jackass Forever back into 2021… but will they? That might be up to you. So spread this article on social media using the hashtag #JackassForeverNow and make your voice heard. For any readers with a way of contacting Preston Lacy, you should immediately send him this article with a note that he send it to Party Boy who could send it to Johnny Knoxville who could then get it to the heads of Paramount. Be the change that you want to see in the Box-Office.
#JackassForeverNow