Jackass: Best and Last Is Tracking for the Smallest Opening the Franchise Has Ever Had

The last Jackass movie opens this weekend, and the box office is telling two stories that flatly disagree with each other.

"Jackass: Best and Last" is heading for the lowest opening any Jackass film has ever posted. Variety puts the debut at $10 million to $12 million across roughly 2,800 theaters. Earlier in the month, trackers had it as high as $14 million to $19 million, and even that ceiling would set a franchise low. For a series that spent 25 years turning bodily harm into a dependable theatrical draw, that is a soft landing.

Then there is the other number. The film sits at 93 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, the best reviews the franchise has ever gotten.

The math that makes a low opening fine

Here is why nobody at Paramount is sweating the projection. "Best and Last" cost about $10 million to make. That is the same budget as 2022's "Jackass Forever," which opened to $23 million and finished with $80.5 million worldwide.

A $10 million movie does not need a big opening to turn a profit. It needs to show up, hold its loyal audience, and not embarrass anyone on the balance sheet. Every Jackass movie has cleared that bar. They are cheap, the fans are loyal, and the brand has outlasted most of the comedy franchises that were supposed to be safer bets.

The trajectory makes the point. Jackass 3D opened to $50.3 million in 2010, the high mark for the series. "Jackass: The Movie" launched the theatrical run in 2002 with $22.7 million and rode it to nearly $80 million worldwide. Even "Forever," only four years ago, managed a $23 million debut. "Best and Last" is tracking at less than half of that, and it will still be a good investment.

Why the opening is soft

The simplest explanation is right there in the title. This one is not entirely new. "Best and Last" is built as a send-off, a mix of fresh stunts and a highlight reel pulled from the show and the four previous movies, with talking-head segments from the cast cut throughout. That format reads as a celebration to fans and as a clip show to box office tracking, which tends to discount anything that is not a wholly original installment.

There is also the room it walks into. "Best and Last" opens against "Supergirl," which is targeting $47 million to $50 million, and into the second weekend of "Toy Story 5," which is expected to keep the top spot with $80 million to $90 million after the biggest debut of the year. None of those titles are chasing the same ticket buyer, which is the entire counterprogramming logic. They still soak up screens and attention.

By the time Thursday previews came in, the picture held: box office trackers clocked the film at around $1.2 million from its first night, on the low end of the genre.

What the reviews actually say

The 93 percent is not small-sample charity. Critics keep reaching for the same word: farewell. Variety called it "an amusing, slightly wistful farewell." The Hollywood Reporter framed it as "one final (fingers crossed) hurrah." The recurring note is that a movie about grown men getting launched, shocked, and gored turns out to be more emotional than anyone expected, because everyone on screen knows it is the end.

This is the final theatrical Jackass, and the production treated it that way. Spike Jonze directed the opening and closing sequences. Bam Margera, fired during "Forever," appears only in archival footage. Footage of Ryan Dunn, who died in 2011, is in the movie too. Johnny Knoxville has said plainly that this is where it stops. "This is the natural place to end," he said.

The verdict on the numbers

If "Best and Last" opens where Variety expects, it will be the smallest Jackass debut on record and, almost certainly, the most profitable per dollar the series has ever spent. That is a strange thing to write about a movie whose marquee bit involves a robot named Larry and a prostate exam, but the math does not care. A franchise that started on MTV as guys hurting themselves for laughs is ending as one of the few comedy bets in Hollywood that still reliably pays off. Going out quiet at the box office was always part of the deal. The reviews are the bonus.