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Winning: Kevin Hart’s ‘Let Me Explain’ May Be One of the Top Grossing Concert Films

Posted byBy A Moore | Published on: CommentsComments (1)

The big box office news of the 5 day weekend, of course, is how Despicable Me 2 crushed The Lone Ranger. However, the most impressive story is the success of Kevin Hart’s concert film Let Me Explain.

Hart’s standup comedy film grossed an amazing $17.4 million from only 876 theaters. These are not numbers to be overlooked.

Shadow & Act writes:

The film was the lowest budgeted film to debut last week, and opened in the least amount of theaters, yet it had the third biggest per screen average following Despicable Me and The Way, Way Back for Fox Searchlight.

Kevin Hart: Let me Explain has surpassed the achievement of Hart’s previous concert film, Laugh At My Pain, which grossed just under $8 million total, opened in less than 300 theaters, and according to Shadow & Act may have become the highest grossing standup concert movie released theatrically since 1982.

Using Box Office Mojo and The Numbers as my primary sources, I can say that weekend box office numbers of $17.5 million has made Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain the 5th-highest-grossing standup concert movie released theatrically since 1982 (I couldn’t locate any box office information for concert movies released before that year – again, emphasis on those released theatrically).

These are the highest grossing concert films that Let Me Explain trails, according to the site (numbers adjusted for inflation).

1

   Eddie Murphy Raw   $100.4 million

    1,494

    

12/18/87

2

   The Original Kings of Comedy   $50.2 million

    1,082

    

8/18/00

3

   Richard Pryor: Live on the Sunset Strip   $85    million

    1,277

    

3/12/82

4

   Martin Lawrence Live: Runteldat   $24.3 million

    774

    

8/2/02

Things are unlikely to stop there for Let Me Explain. As stated before, the film only opened on 876 screens, and will likely reach many more in the following weeks. Additionally, more revenue will be generated from DVD, Blueray, and Netflix sales.

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