Johnny Knoxville scored with a $32 million debut of Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa , but where does he rank among today’s best comedy stars?
Johnny Knoxville and Jackson Nicoll in Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa
Sean Cliver / Paramount Pictures
With Jackass Presents: Bad Grandpa opening this weekend with an estimated $32 million, actor Johnny Knoxville has his sixth box office hit in 11 years — a pretty strong record for an American comedy star. Granted, almost all those hits are part of the Jackass franchise. But with only two exceptions (the modest hit The Dukes of Hazzard, and the outright misfire The Ringer, both in 2005), Knoxville has wisely only placed himself as a movie's main star if the word "Jackass" appears somewhere in the title (and his body comes to some kind of harm). Otherwise, he has been content to show up as a wisecracking sidekick and let another actor do the heavy lifting.
But how does Knoxville match up against the other comedy stars of the day? Using data from Box Office Mojo, I looked at 20 other actors whose résumés are predominantly mainstream comedies (excluding actors with more varied careers like Will Smith, Sandra Bullock, Mark Wahlberg, Bradley Cooper, and Cameron Diaz), and averaged the opening weekend gross and total domestic gross of their respective wide-release comedies since 2002 (when Knoxville's film career took off with the first Jackass film). I included animated franchises like Shrek, Madagascar, Kung Fu Panda, and Despicable Me, because they play as much to adults as to children, they are all marketed on the star power of the voice talent behind them, and, as you'll see, they prove to be a vital element to a comedy star's longterm box office success.
When all the numbers are crunched, it turns out Knoxville lands just about in the middle of the pack, but ahead of some major Hollywood heavy hitters. Here they all are, ranked by average opening weekend.
Zach Galifianakis
Average opening weekend gross: $42.5 million
Average total domestic gross: $157.2 million
Total lead comedy roles since 2002: 7
Galifianakis' surprising place as Hollywood's top comedy star comes with the caveat that he's only had a starring role in four comedies that weren't part of the Hangover franchise. If you factor that trilogy out, his opening weekend average for his four remaining starring roles drops to $31.3 million, and total average to $114 million — still very impressive numbers that would keep him among the top tier of box office comedy stars today.
But that would be silly — the Hangover movies are largely built on Galifianakis' appeal, and they would not be the monster hits they are without him. Really, the fact that those movies have vaulted Galifianakis to the top of this list just underlines how much they have come to define Hollywood comedy in the last half-decade.
Jason Kempin / Getty Images
Eddie Murphy (including the Shrek films)
Average opening weekend gross: $36.9 million
Average total domestic gross: $120 million
Total lead comedy roles since 2002: 12
Believe it or not, when factoring in the last three Shrek films, Eddie Murphy is still very much a box office heavyweight. Stay tuned, however, to understand just how big of an impact those animated films have made on Murphy's career.
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