Weekend Box-Office: April 29 – May 1, 2011

Last Updated on August 5, 2021

Fast
Five smashes records!!!

Wow. Like wow. Just when you
think the franchise is "overdoing" it, it turns out that
they’re doing it just right, sticking with the two leads that are
most identifiable to the franchise, adding the friggin’ Rock,
as well as an awesome Brazilian background and the next thing you
know…records are smashed! FAST FIVE made $84M in its opening
weekend, making it the highest movie debut of the year (by a long
shot, btw…the previous record was RIO’s $39M), as well as the
biggest April opening of all-time (the previous record was
held by the film’s previous installment, FAST & FURIOUS, which
made $71M at the time). And last but certainly not least, the film
became Universal’s biggest opening of all-time (previous
record holder was THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK with $72M back in
1997). Wow.

You can see by the past films’
figures below, that the franchise has always been pretty healthy
in terms of revenues, except for TOKYO DRIFT, which managed a
total of only $63M back in 2006. That said, with this $84M
opening, it does appear as though this latest installment will
become the highest-grossing FAST AND FURIOUS movie of all-time
(current record is $155M), but we’ll really have to "wait and
see" how it does over the next few weeks. It doesn’t hurt
that this latest incarnation has also been receiving great reviews
all around, by film critics (80%
on Rotten Tomatoes) and movie fans alike (8.1/10
on Movie Fan Central).

FAST AND FURIOUS (2009):
$155M (total), $70M (opening)
FAST AND FURIOUS: TOKYO DRIFT (2006): $63M (total), $24M
(opening)
2 FAST 2 FURIOUS (2003): $127M (total), $50M (opening)
THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (2001): $145M (total), $40M
(opening)

The film that previously held the "year’s
biggest opening" record, RIO, and was the #1 movie for the
past two weekends, managed to fall into second place with about
$14M in grosses this weekend, while at the same time, increasing
its overall total to over the $100M mark. In doing so, it becomes
the 4th film of the year to surpass that mark (RANGO ($119M), HOP
($105M) and JUST GO WITH IT ($102M)).

At the same time, this becomes the 3rd straight
weekend that receipts have increased at the box-office
compared to last year, which is nice since things had been going
downhill since last fall. In fact, 2011 revenues were running
about 20% below last year’s numbers just three weeks ago, so it’ll
be interesting to see how the summer movies affect that trend
going forward. It’s to note that the other two new films, PROM and
HOODWINKED TOO, performed pretty badly in their debuts, with about
$4-5M respectively.

The 3 films to get knocked out of the top 10 to
make room for the new movies this weekend included SCREAM 4 which
is officially a "disappointment" now, as it dropped from
5th to 13th place in only its 3rd weekend of release. The film
cost about $40M to make, but only made about $35M (which was, by
far, the worst total for any SCREAM movie ever — next lowest
gross was $89M by SCREAM 3). It’s to note that James Wan’s horror
film INSIDIOUS, on the other hand, remains in the top 10 after
five weeks of release, and a budget of only $2M. The other two
films to get booted were AFRICAN CATS ($11M) and HANNA ($36M).

Next week is the start of the "official
summer movie season" (although obviously FAST FIVE got in right
under the wire this year) with Natalie Portman’s THOR
opening wide (dassa joke), the female-targeted JUMPING
THE BROOM taking advantage of the "wedding buzz"
in the air, as well as the latest attempt by Kate Hudson to do
anything…well, entertaining, in a little rom-com entitled
SOMETHING
BORROWED, co-starring the adorable Ginnifer Goodwin. If
you haven’t voted for your "most anticipated summer
movie" yet, you can do so HERE,
or go directly to our question of the day which asks you to guess
how much $$$ THOR will open with next weekend? VOTE
HERE!!!