Fast and Furious Drives to $30 Million Opening Day
By Jeff Olson
April 4, 2009
Source: BoxOfficeMojo
Who would have guessed that a movie franchise which most thought had gone to the junkyard would be on it’s way to having the biggest opening of any movie this year? Fast and Furious (it dropped the “the” from the title for the fourth movie) had a huge opening day grossing $30 million. This is way beyond expectations. Most reports were gauging the film to do about $40-$45 million opening weekend. Even the most embellished numbers did not for see an opening of this caliber . If the rest of the weekend holds up for Vin Diesel and crew, this movie could well be on it’s way to hitting $70 million by Monday morning. That would make it the biggest debut of the year beating last weeks winner for biggest opening, Monsters VS. Aliens.
These numbers are surprising for a spring release. What I find even more surprising is that this film was originally slated to be released in June and the studio decided to pull it back to an April opening. That is usually a sign that your movie may not be able to compete with the big boys of summer. That clearly is not the case.
The first Fast and Furious opened in June of 2001 to $40 million. The second film, titled, 2 Fast 2 Furious, made $50 million in it’s opening in June 2003. The third movie, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift only made $23 million it’s first weekend in June of 2006. So far, Fast and Furious (2009) have blown all these numbers out of the water.
Why such a huge box office draw you may ask? I have two reasons for the blockbuster success of the film thus far. One: Fans of the original film are excited to see the original cast back together for a story which looks pretty similar to the first movie. Two: Movie goers seem to enjoy escapism flicks lately. Look at the success of Paul Blart: Mall Cop and Liam Neeson’s Taken as examples of movies nobody expected to make a dent in the box office.
Check back with us tomorrow when we will recap the weekend box office and deliver the final number for Fast and Furious.
1 Comment
I'll tell you why this movie did such great numbers… cuz it kicks… well let's just say the movie exceeded expectations.. Looking at the movement the first movie made, and the following it had.. It was genius to bring back the cast. Everybody wanted it for 2Fast 2Furious, instead they got Tyrese Gibson.. then Tokyo Drift… well not much to say about that one. Everyone who followed this movie was left wondering.. "What happened to Torreto?", "Why did O'Connor let him go, and put himself on the line?", "When are they gonna make a worthwhile follow up to THE Fast and THE Furious?" Well.. Original cast, original concept, original reason for everyone to return to see what they have been waiting for since Vin Diesel drove away.