Box Office: 'Jason Bourne' Now Targeting $60M; 'Bad Moms' Laughing to $26M-Plus

'Bourne' will mark the second-best opening of Matt Damon's career behind 'The Bourne Ultimatum'; elsewhere, Lionsgate's techo-thriller 'Nerve' is also performing nicely since opening midweek.

Audiences are embracing Matt Damon's return as a mysterious CIA assassin trying to recover his memory after a nine-year hiatus from the big screen.

Universal's Jason Bourne topped the Friday box office with $22.7 million from 4,026 theaters after earning an A- CinemaScore from audiences, putting it on course to win the North American weekend box-office race with as much as $60 million. That would mark one of the best debuts of summer 2016 and the best of Damon's career behind the $69 million launch of The Bourne Ultimatum in 2007. And it would trounce the $38.1 million start of the last film in the spy action series, The Bourne Legacy, made sans Damon.

The action film is also impressing overseas, where it has amassed $22.8 million from 46 markets since rolling out midweek for an estimated $49 million weekend, the best opening of any title in the series.

Jason Bourne, costing $120 million to produce, reunites Damon with director Paul Greengrass, who helmed The Bourne Supremacy (2004) and The Bourne Ultimatum.

The latest installment sees Damon's former CIA operative come out of hiding just as a new government program has been created to hunt him down while he tries to recover all of his memories. Alicia Vikander, Tommy Lee Jones, Vincent Cassel, Julia Stiles and Riz Ahmed also star.

STX Entertainment's female-skewing Bad Moms is also performing nicely. The pic placed No. 2 Friday with $9.6 million from 3,215 theaters for a projected $26 million-$27 million weekend, one of the stronger showings for a raunchy, R-rated comedy in recent times. More bullish observers think it even has a shot at $30 million.

Bad Moms, costing a net $20 million to produce, was directed and written by Jon Lucas and Scott Moore, and follows a trio of overworked and under-appreciated moms — played by Mila Kunis, Kristen Bell and Kathryn Hahn — who rebel and embark on an adventure of freedom and self-indulgence. The movie, nabbing a stellar A CinemaScore, co-stars Annie Mumolo, Jay Hernandez, Jada Pinkett Smith and Christina Applegate.

And finally, Nerve, Lionsgate's thriller starring Emma Roberts and Dave Franco is expected to gross a strong $15.7 million over its five-day debut after hitting theaters Wednesday. Its projected weekend take is $9.7 million, including $3.2 million on Friday.

Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman, the film, receiving an A-CinemScore, follows the duo as they get sucked into a dangerous modern game of truth or dare.

Among holdovers, Paramount's Star Trek Beyond looks to jump the $100 million mark in its second weekend and come in No. 3 with an estimated $23 million-plus. Universal and Illumination Entertainment's The Secret Life of Pets is holding at No. 4 in its fourth weekend as it approaches the $300 million mark domestically, while New Line's horror hit Lights Out should gross an estimated $11 million in its second weekend, pushing its total cume to $43 million and rounding out the top five.

July 29, 12:45 p.m. Updated with weekend projections.

July 30, 7:15 a.m. Updated with Friday numbers and revised weekend projections.