Jackass: Best and Last opened to $8.4 million domestically over its debut weekend (June 26-28), the lowest opening in the franchise history. It also holds a 93% on Rotten Tomatoes. Both are franchise records. They point in opposite directions.
Released by Paramount on June 26, the film is the fifth and final entry in the Jackass series, directed by Jeff Tremaine. At 92 minutes, it combines new stunts with archive footage and greatest-hits clips from across the franchise 25-year run. The final third, by multiple accounts, plays less like a prank reel and more like an elegy. The Hollywood Reporter praised Tremaine's "control of tone." Variety described it as "an amusing, slightly wistful farewell."
The numbers tell a different story at the multiplex. Jackass 3D opened to $50.4 million in 2010. Jackass Forever opened to $23.2 million in 2022. Jackass: Best and Last finished fourth on its opening weekend, behind Toy Story 5 ($70 million), Supergirl ($38 million), and the romantic thriller Obsession ($9.8 million). International returns were $1.9 million from 19 markets, for a worldwide total of $10.3 million.
The production budget was approximately $10 million, keeping the business logic intact regardless of audience turnout. Still, the inversion is hard to ignore: a franchise built on the premise that spectacle could substitute for craft is closing with its most critically accomplished entry and its smallest crowd.
Johnny Knoxville, now 55, leads the cast alongside Steve-O, Chris Pontius, and Sean "Poopies" McInerney. Bam Margera is absent, amid a legal dispute that has followed the franchise since Jackass Forever. What the film apparently achieves despite that absence, and despite the decades of diminishing returns, is a coherent farewell. The audience, it seems, missed the announcement.
