Bad Boys: Ride Or Die

Source: Sony Pictures Entertainment

‘Bad Boys: Ride Or Die’

Sony is rolling out Bad Boys: Ride Or Die at 643 locations to make it the widest release in the UK and Ireland this weekend. 

Will Smith and Martin Lawrence reprise their roles as two renegade cops standing in the way of a Miami drugs cartel, with Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah directing.

It is the fourth installment in the Bad Boys franchise following the most recent, Bad Boys For Life, opening to £3.8m in January 2020, surpassing the £866,215 opening of 1995’s Bad Boys and the £3.2m of 2003’s Bad Boys II.

The Watched, known outside of UK-Ireland as The Watchers, is hoping to scare up audiences at 549 cinemas for Warner Bros. The Ireland-shot horror is the debut from Ishana Night Shyamalan, daughter of filmmaker M Night Shyamalan, who is a producer on the film, and starring Dakota Fanning, Georgina Campbell and Olwen Fouéré.

Fanning plays an American woman living in Ireland and working in a pet shop, who gets sent to deliver a bird to Belfast zoo, but finds herself in trouble in a mysterious forest.

Park Circus is re-releasing The Matrix, to chime with the action sci-fi’s 25th anniversary, at 286 sites. The distributor is also releasing Matthew Warchus’s Pride in 240 sites, to mark both the comedy drama’s 10th anniversary and the UK’ s official LGBTQ+ Pride month, this June.

The Dead Don’t Hurt is unleashed at 244 sites for Signature. The western, which had a festival run that included Toronto and Glasgow, is directed by and stars Viggo Mortensen, alongside Vicky Krieps.

Picturehouse has Cannes 2023 drama Rosalie out at 65 sites, about a bearded woman living in 1870s France, from French filmmaker Stephanie Di Giusto. 

Seventh Art Distribution is opening the documentary Exhibition On Screen: My National Gallery 2024 at 49 venues this weekend, following its Tuesday June 4 release. The film features the likes of Claudia Winkleman, Michael Palin, Terry Gilliam, Jacqueline Wilson and Princess Eugenie talking about how their lives have been touched by London’s famed art gallery, as it celebrates its 200th anniversary.

Trinity Film/Cine Asia is at 23 sites for 3D Chinese animation Deep Sea, directed by Tian Xiaopeng, which played last year in the Generation KPlus strand at the Berlinale.

Finnish comedy Four Little Adults is opening at 11 sites for Modern Films. Selma Vilhunen directs the story of a middle-class couple trying out polyamory.

Bas Devos’ drama Here, which premiered at the Berlinale in the Encounters stand, is out at eight sites for New Wave Films. It centres around a Romanian construction worker and a Belgian-Chinese botanist who experience a life-changing chance encounter at a restaurant in Brussels.

Also incoming to UK-Ireland cinemas this weekend is Dogwoof’s Food, Inc. 2, the follow-up to Robert Kenner’s Oscar-nominated documentary, that explores how corporate consolidation has gone unchecked by the US government and the farmers and activists who attempt to confront these companies.

Further releases are Cannes 2023 premiere Riddle Of Fire for Icon Distribution; ICA’s You Burn Me, the latest from Argentinian director Matias Piñeiro, which premiered at the Berlianle; and Altitude’s slasher, Winnie The Pooh: Blood And Honey.

Key holdovers include last weekend’s box office number one IF (Parmaount), The Garfield Movie (Sony), Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga (Warner Bros) and Sting (Studiocanal).