At the beginning of this summer, it was hard to imagine that Ted would become one of the highest grossing R-rated comedies of all-time. This was a unique concept from a rookie film director in Family Guy creator Seth MacFarlane and even Mark Wahlberg did not think the film would work at times. Perhaps it is only suiting that a film of this nature would spur on the unbelievable. With Ted, MacFarlane not only showed that the brand of humor responsible for making him one of television’s highest paid producers can translate to the big screen, but he did it in record-breaking fashion.
It all started in May when out of the blue, Paramount moved G.I. Joe: Retaliation back a year for a 3D upgrade and re-shoots. The date vacated? June 29. It took less than a few hours after the news broke for Universal to move Ted on top of the date and it turned out to be a good one as the film went on to score $54.4 million in its opening weekend–the most ever for an original R-rated comedy.
What is even more impressive is this was done against Steven Soderbergh’s Magic Mike which was a champion in its own right with over $39 million in the same period. Over time this Mark Wahlberg-led comedy would outshine its R-rated competitor as strong word of mouth lead to massive retention figures, giving us today’s news. Ted just completed a $5.5 million sixth weekend which allowed the $50 million-comedy to pass $200 million at the North American box office. Only three pure R-rated comedies have previously accomplished the feat: both Hangover films and Wedding Crashers.
While this may seem good enough for the flick, many are forgetting the international box office. Leaving the film’s original mid-July release date widened the gap between domestic and foreign debuts beyond what was already deemed pretty long. Most overseas markets are just starting to see Ted for the first time and numbers are expected to be impressive. The comedy’s foreign total currently stands at just over $77 million with nearly half of that coming from Australia.
Since this was about on par with what we saw for The Hangover Part II, this suggests a global haul could likely wind up being north of $400 million when it is all said and done. For those of you wondering, yes there will probably be a sequel as MacFarlane is said to be open to the idea and in today’s world that is all that it takes to get things moving.
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FX Grabs Cable Rights to ‘Ted’