Image Courtesy of Sony Pictures

Besting even the most optimistic predictions, Sony / Columbia’s action comedy sequel Bad Boys For Life stands at estimated $62.1M three-day and $73.4M four-day holiday weekend estimates.

For context, the average three-day projections were generally in the low $40M range. On one popular box office prediction website, the highest that any user projected was $51M for the three-day.

This result is about in line with 2003’s sequel Bad Boys II which opened with $70.6M if adjusting for ticket price inflation ($46.5M originally).

Yet that film opened in July instead of January and was at the peak of Will Smith’s stardom, making For Life‘s approximately even opening even more impressive.

For comparison, Smith’s similar action movie Gemini Man underperformed in October with only $48.5M total — a number For Life exceeded in its opening weekend alone.

Compared to other similar action sequels or reboots in the past year, For Life beat both the $17.8M total of November’s Charlie’s Angels and the $21.3M total of June’s Shaft on its opening Friday alone.

Its opening also beat the $62.2M total of November’s Terminator: Dark Fate and almost beat the $80.0M total of June’s Men in Black: International.

The studio estimates keep going higher and higher. Saturday’s four-day projection was for For Life to earn $63.5M, then that estimate was upped to $68.1M on Sunday, and now $73.4M on Monday.

The actual number may still be higher yet, when the final numbers are revealed on Tuesday afternoon.

1995’s original Bad Boys opened with $32.6M if adjusting for ticket price inflation ($15.5M originally).