By Jeff Olson
April 5, 2009
Source: BoxOfficeMojo
Vin Diesel and his Fast and Furious crew completely killed the box office competition this weekend. Box Office Mojo is reporting that the fourth film in the popular franchise took in an estimated $72.5 million this weekend. That makes it the highest April opening for any movie ever. It also makes it the highest opening weekend for any film this year. It beat Monsters VS. Aliens gross of $59 million just one week before. This movie smashed all expectations. With a huge opening day of $30 million, the film held up all weekend long. It took in another $24 million on Saturday and $17 million on Sunday.
This is a huge total for a movie which was released in April. Here are some more interesting facts about the record breaking weekend for Fast and Furious:
The movie had the biggest April opening ever. It beat Anger Management’s gross of $42.2.
It is the biggest opening weekend of the year. It beat Watchmen’s opening weekend of $55 and Monsters VS. Aliens $59 million first weekend.
It is the third highest debut for a movie released before summer. It falls behind 300 and The Passion of the Christ.
This is no surprise: Fast and Furious is the biggest opening for actors Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Michelle Rodriguez.
The rest of the weekend box office looked like this:
Monsters VS Aliens held on nicely. The Dreamworks animated flick dropped only 44% for a weekend sum of $33.5 million. After 10 days the film has already crossed the $100 million mark. The Haunting in Connecticut was number three for the weekend bringing in $9.6. Knowing (#4) and I Love You, Man (#5) remained strong contenders in their third week with $8.1 and $7.9 million respectively. The other new release this weekend was the comedy Adventureland which failed to find an audience with only $6 million in the bank.
With a weekend gross of $72.5 million we can assume there will be a Fast and Furious 5. This weekends box office was an astounding 68% percent from this time last year when the Vegas card counting flick 21 ruled the box office. Next week Seth Rogen’s mall cop comedy Observe and Report and Miley Cyrus’ Hannah Montana the Movie will try to mix things up.
