If you haven’t seen the hilarious Girls Trip yet–girl, what are you waiting for?
When four friends–Regina Hall, Tiffany Haddish, Jada Pinkett Smith and Queen Latifah—travel to New Orleans for the annual Essence Festival during a girls trip, sisterhoods are rekindled, wild sides are rediscovered, and there’s enough dancing, drinking, brawling and romancing to make the Big Easy blush.
The raunchy comedy brought in $30.4 million in its opening weekend–and just crossed the $100 million mark at the domestic box office!
“The films that I’ve done do appeal to black women,” said director Malcolm Lee, “but here’s an opportunity for black women to tell the story — for them to be the leads and tell it the way they want to see it, the way they see themselves.”
Inspired by the kind of movies “usually with white guys — they go off and have a fun trip and behave really badly,” Lee decided to recreate the experience “with some chocolate girls.”
Audiences agreed, and Girls Trip became the highest grossing opening for a live action comedy in 2017.
A large part of the movie’s success is that women can see a little bit of themselves in each character. “Malcolm and I wanted the couth, articulate, well-mannered and high-powered [woman], but also the down to Earth, ’round the way girl,” said producer Will Packer. “We wanted the ultra bougie and the super ratchet.”
And crossing the $100 million mark is a celebration for us all–Girls Trip” has become the first film produced, written, directed by and starring African Americans to do so.
Lee attributes the movie’s topping the box office to a combination of things. “I definitely think it was a combination of things. First of all, you’re dealing with an undeserved audience that Will and I and the studio as well felt that this was a ‘Sex and the City’ for black women,” he said. “Quite honestly, the precursor to ‘Sex and the City’ was ‘Living Single’ and ‘Girlfriends.’ I think that it’s a movie that celebrated them at a place that felt like an event with the setting being at the Essence Festival. I felt women were going to own this movie and claim it as their movie…This is fun and this is black women telling their story the way they see themselves. Black girl magic is real, and everyone’s craving it right now.”
