Scary Movie Returns Politically Incorrect Humor to Top of the Box Office

Roughly a decade ago, Hollywood decided that crude, politically incorrect humor was a commercial and cultural liability.The #MeToo and #BlackLivesMatter movements were gaining momentum, and studio executives (largely liberal and intensely risk averse) stopped supporting offense-courting comedies like “Ted” and “Tropic Thunder.” Why invite a Twitter firestorm?That period of timidity — some would call it “wokeism” — may have ended over the weekend.“The culture is ready for a level of outrageousness that has been missing,” Josh Goldstine, the president of global marketing and distribution at Paramount Pictures, said on Sunday.

“You have to have the willingness, the courageousness, to just go for it.”“Scary Movie,” promoted by Paramount with the phrases “canceling cancel culture” and “lines will be crossed,” collected an estimated $55 million at North American theaters over the weekend, according to Comscore, a data service.That total, easily enough for No.

1, was roughly 22 percent more than box office analysts had predicted before the movie’s release based on advance ticket sales and surveys that track moviegoer interest.The opening for “Scary Movie” was the biggest for an R-rated comedy in 12 years.In 2014, the vulgar “22 Jump Street” took in $57 million in its first three days, or about $80 million after adjusting for inflation.“We could have gone a little bit harder,” Marlon Wayans, who stars in the film and contributed to its screenplay, said in a telephone interview.

“We were trying to hit a bull’s-eye.If you hit too hard, it becomes real divisive in comedy and you lose people.

We were just trying to keep everybody in that bull’s-eye where everybody could have fun with the laughs.”“Scary Movie,” a reboot of the 2000s-era parody franchise created by the Wayans family, cost an estimated $30 million to make, not including marketing.It was produced by Miramax, which is co-owned by Paramount and the Qa...