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SUNDAY AM: The heated-up domestic box office just got even hotter… The lesson is that Hollywood should never underestimate moviegoers’ tolerance for retread material. Even Universal knew when they announced a 4th installment of their worn-out street racing franchise that everyone else would say there was no life left. But they got the original 2001 cast together and made a true sequel that picks up the Fast & Furious story where it left off in The Fast And The Furious. (“New Model… Original Parts”.) The result was a jaw-dropping $30.5 million haul Friday and $24.7 million Saturday (only -19%) and estimated Sunday $17.3 from 3,461 theaters for an unexpectedly humongous opening weekend of $72.5M. (Which now includes the Thursday midnight showings of $1.8M.)
That’s a whopping 1/3 more than the studio thought possible, and now the biggest April opening ever by a mile (previous best was Anger Management‘s $42M in 2003) as well as the highest opening weekend of 2009 (besting Monsters v Aliens’ $59.3 million). Fast & Furious also had the franchise’s best opening weekend (2001′s The Fast And The Furious $40.1M, 2003′s 2 Fast 2 Furious $50.5M, 2006′s Fast And The Furious: Tokyo Drift $24M). It was also the best debut for a car-themed movie (passing Cars $60.1M). This just doesn’t happen like this, folks, even with a great marketing and distribution campaign supervised by Adam Fogelson: Hollywood is in shock.
What’s interesting is the movie that launched Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Michelle Rodriguez is now saving their careers since Vin and Paul have been in a succession of film flops, while Michelle’s arrests could have lost her the Lost gig. They were directed by Justin Lin, who helmed The Fast And The Furious threequel Tokyo Drift — which also was written by Fast & Furious scripter Chris Morgan. And producer Neal Moritz produced all four in the franchise.
Fast & Furious also opened day and date in 32 overseas markets, and it looks to have made in excess of $30.1M internationally, bigger than the openings of all the films in the Fast and Furious franchise. The film debuted No. 1 almost everywhere including Germany, Austria, Spain, Mexico, Brazil, Peru, Venezuela, Denmark, Greece, Iceland, Israel, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Romania, Turkey, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines and Thailand. So, from the first weekend in theaters, Fast & Furious had a worldwide gross of $102.6M.
The No. 2 film that was last week’s top pic, DreamWorks Animation’s Monsters v Aliens, hung on for $8.8 million Friday (down only 45% from a week ago) and $14.3 million Saturday. The 3-D toon playing in a total 4,109 venues took in as much as $33.5M this weekend for a fresh cume of $105.7M. In case you didn’t notice, that’s $1o5+M at the box office just between #1 and #2 — when last year’s total was $90M all in. Total FSS will be $150M, a staggering +75% from last year. (No wonder movie moguls don’t want anyone knowing how much their studios are raking in the dough in this financial recession. Hard to argue they’re having it as tough as everyone else, no?)
The other opener this weekend are Miramax’s teen comedy Adventureland which, hurt by its R rating, only made $6M this weekend from 1,862 venues. The question is whether the Twilight girls turned out for Kristin Stewart. And Overture Releasing widened put R-rated Sunshine Cleaning into 479 dates for #10 and $1.8 million and a new cume of $4.7M.
Here is Friday’s Top 10
1. Fast & Furious (Universal) OPENER [3,461] Wkd $71M
2. Monsters v Aliens (DWA/Par) Week 2 [4,109] Wkd $33.5M, Cume $105.7M
3. Haunting In Conn (LG) Week 3 [2,732] Wkd $9.5M, Cume $37.2M
4. Knowing (Summit) Week 3 [3,323] Wkd $8.1M, Cume $58.2M
5. I Love You, Man (DW/Par) Week 3 [2,829] Wkd $7.8M, Cume $49.2M
6. Adventureland (Miramax) OPENER [1,862] Wkd $6M
7. Duplicity (Universal) Week 3 [2,522] Wkd $4.3M, Cume $32.3M
8. Witch Mountain (Disney) Week 4 [2,825] Wkd $3.3M, Cume $58.3M
9. 12 Rounds (WWE/Fox) Week 2 [2,331] Wkd $2.3M, Cume $9M
10. Sunshine Cleaning (Overture) Week 4 [479] Wkd $1.8M, Cume $4.7M
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Wow. Adam and the gang at Universal did a great job marketing this one!
Any news on Adventure land?
How’d Adventureland do?
LAZ ALONSO is the real star of this film. He shoulda gotten top billing:
LAZ ALONSO in FAST AND THE FURIOUS. Everyone else is just window dressing
thx for info, you’re always the fastest
Wow! Congrats Universal! And credit goes to Justin Lin and Neil Moritz. Nice work guys! Sensational opening.
It’s Neal Moritz…not Neil.
congrats nonetheless.
great great opening.
You can’t predict what the crowd wants. We are going to watch what we want to watch.
Not surprised by the success — there’s a big audience for this franchise that seemingly just keeps on building. And with its original cast back, well…the sky’s the limit.
I see No. 5 whizzing around the corner by 2011…
Adventureland deserves to do better than $6 million this weekend. I’m not sure why Miramax didn’t work harder to make the film a Superbad-sized hit.
Now I know why the movie theater I work at was dead tonight. We opened Adventureland and no one showed up. We thought it was the forecast (Denver snow turned to rain). Looks like America was pre-occupied with another movie.
I consider myself a movie snob, but want to see Fast and Furious. I only liked the first one. I think this is going to lose steam after opening night. Wait and see.
I’d really like to know the name of the genius who found the tagline “New Model… Original Parts”. This is one the best taglines since “You know the name, You know the number” in 1995. This is marketing as an Art.
I have a longer review on my blog but “Adventureland” is a film that critics will love and nobody else will be interested in. It’s a romantic that has little romance and even less comedy. It’s little more than a forgettable 80′s teen romance with the contrived plot removed.
Critics will love that it is understated, well-acted, shot nicely, and celebrates Lou Reed and for those reasons they’ll overlook that it is as cliched and preposterous as any other low rent romance. A film like “He’s Just Not That Into You” is over-the-top for comedic effect; this film is understated for the sake of being understated. I thought Kristin Stewart did a great job but this film needed a magnetic personality more than an accomplished actress. (Also, the people who complained about the females in “He’s Just Not That Into You” and “Bride Wars” should have similar issues with these damsels-in-distress, all of whom are either defined by their relationship with men or by their conflicts with other women)
Not that Fast and Furious was good but it at least passed the time. It offered a bit of an escape whereas I just wanted to escape from Adventureland.
I love Nikki’s reactions. If it had made less money, she’d have been mocking it and calling it a complete disaster, but it’ll have a big opening weekend, so it’s a huge success and so, so, so, so exciting. Just wait for the big dropoff next weekend and we’ll see just how exciting this really is.
Adventureland is a sweet movie, but the R rating and lack of stars (Is there any doubt remaining that Stewart, despite being a good actress in Adventureland, is not a star?) will kill it this weekend. It doesn’t have enough R-rated content to justify maintaining that rating. With some minor adjustments, it could have carried a PG-13 and it’s grosses could be be at least 50% larger. It was never going to be a blockbuster, but you have to try to give it a chance to broaden some.
Oh, well.
WOW! Unreal! Did not expect that in the least. Even if you’re not a fan of the series you have to admit that the Friday gross is pretty damn spectacular considering its the 4th in a franchise. The 5th is rest assured already greenlit.
Bob, how much harder could Miramax have worked? If anything it feels like Adventureland opened a month ago because it’s been marketed down our collective throats for so long. I think the film looks great and intend to see it, but the film’s been very heavily marketed.
As for F&F making bank – further proof I know nothing about this business.
The movie would have been even better if it had been shot in full color rather than in blue and white and brown and white.
Fast Cars. Check
Hot Chicks. Check
Nice Stunts. Check
Big Stars. Check
This franchise is like comfort food for men. It’s the mac n’ cheese of movies with a side of steak. Of course it’s going to do well. They threw a lot of money on the marketing and it shows. There is ALWAYS a huge appetite for this kind of movie…+ no competition for this demo. Winner.
‘F&F Tokyo Drift’ promo was/is on most every Big Screen Demo of HD in the Big Box stores. The awesome drift chase and wreck through downtown Tokyo drew plenty of lookers in the stores, sold a bunch of Big Screen TVs (and sound systems) as well as DVDs. I was at the local Best Buy and people were asking for that scene on the promo disc to demo the TV they were interested in!
Just another area of solid promotion reaching into the corners.
Never underestimate the stupidity of the average moviegoer.
Congrats America!! You just earned yourself Fast and Furious 5, 6, and 7!
Fast cars, macho men, beautiful women, gasoline – if anything, this is the ultimate anti-Washington DC movie.
The public is crisis-weary, bailout-weary and sacrifice-weary. This movie fits the popular, anti-tax ‘tea party’ throngs perfectly. I hope it makes a billion dollars (or is that ‘a trillion’?).
Were they not selling enough lame ass cars to jocky cheesedicks that they had to take another dump on the screen?
Great marketing, people. The trailer got people buzzing. The New model, original parts tagline really worked. I was stunned when a huge sold out NYC Ziegfeld Theater crowd cheered and applauded the trailer. No doubt the film is crap, but if it can save Vin’s career, hey, more power to this flick.