Fast & Furious 6 drove the venerable franchise to new heights over the extended Memorial Day weekend. Riding stars Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson, the action flick got an extra boost from ethnically diverse audiences to deliver the franchise’s best opening to date as well as fuel the best-ever Memorial Day weekend at the box office.
Playing at approximately 3,650 locations and without the benefit of 3D ticket surcharges, Fast & Furious 6 revved up $120 million from Friday through Monday, easily topping the former franchise best of $92.4 million put up by the previous installment Fast Five. An “A” CinemaScore rating helped boost business at the weekend progressed with the Friday through Sunday frame putting up $96.8 million.
The beat goes on for Fast & Furious 6 overseas where it has already earned $197 million, that alone above and beyond the approximate $160 million that Universal spent producing the film. The next installment Fast & Furious 7 is already slated for release next summer, and Amazon.com has begun taking early pre-orders for Fast & Furious 6 on Blu-ray and DVD at a discounted price.
Warner’s The Hangover Part III landed in second place with $51.2 million through the four-day holiday weekend. It opened on Thursday so including those dollars takes its gross total to $63 million. That may seem like a lot for a comedy, but the previous installment earned $135 million during the same frame back in 2011.
Star Trek Into Darkness continues to see the light at the box office in adding another $47 million to its coffers. To date the second Trek film from J.J. Abrams has collected $257.9 million worldwide.
Fourth place went to the Fox and Blue Sky Studios animated film Epic with $42.6 million. That’s fairly in line with the $39.2 million that Rio earned during its opening weekend in one fewer day.
Iron Man 3 capped the top five with $24.4 million. At $1.15 billion and counting, the Marvel Studios film now also sits in fifth place on the highest earning films of all time list.
Fast & Furious 6 will face competition from After Earth next weekend and could very well end up in first place again.
