Hustlers Continues to Win Big At the Box Office

‘Hustlers’ is already September’s highest grossing film behind ‘It: Chapter 2’: The all-female ensemble film grossed $33 million its opening weekend, well over its projected $25 million premiere, making it STX Entertainment's biggest opening ever. It is also the biggest box office opening for Jennifer Lopez and co-star Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians). Hustlers — which is based on real-life events explored in Jessica Pressler’s article "The Hustlers at Scores"—also features Cardi B, Lizzo, Keke Palmer, Julia Styles, and Lili Reinhart as supporting actresses. 

The film raked in another $17 million this past weekend and grossed a worldwide total of $72 million tripling its $20 million budget. Despite its success, director Lorene Scafaria’s ensemble movie still sits behind It: Chapter 2 as September’s highest-grossing film. Scafaria’s feature-length directorial-debut still beat out Brad Pitt’s latest feature Ad-Astra, Sylvester Stallone’s Rambo: Last Blood—both grossed just over $19 million their opening weekends— and Downton Abbey, which grossed an opening figure closer to Hustlers at around $31 million. 

Hustlers is directed, written, and edited by women and centralize its narrative around female characters. In addition to its empowering female representation behind and in front of the camera, women also made up 67% of  audiences its first weekend in theaters. 

Despite facing a 50% decline in ticket sales, the empowering tale which sees a group of night club dancers exploit their male Wall Street clients is projected to continue its stellar box office run. 

Box Office Roundup: Since it began its theatrical run early in July and expanded to a wide release on August 2nd, Lulu Wang’s feature-length directorial debut The Farewell has grossed a domestic total $17,347,644. 

Luce, a film about a young-White couple whose adopted Eritrean son writes a disturbing essay at school, opened in early August to a limited release.  Since the Sundance feature from Nigerian-American filmmaker Julius Onah has only grossed $1,955,758.