Box-Office Wrap-Up: 'Fast Five' Obliterates Records On Way to $83 Million Opening
New April and Universal records set
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| Fast and Furious held the previous April opening record with $70.9 million. The same film held the previous April opening day record with $30.6 million. The largest opening ever for a Universal Pictures film was Steven Spielberg's Lost World: Jurassic Park, which brought in $72.1 million back in 1997. All of those records are now held by one film… Fast Five. Laremy went rather conservative with his $77 million prediction, but the first user prediction on the board last week was the closest as Athar jumped out of the gates with an $83.5 million prediction. Hard to beat that one. Result: $83.6 million Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #1 and his prediction of $77 million was $6.6m off for a percentage error of 7.89%. | |
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Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #2 with $18.42 million, which is $4.02m off for a 27.92% error.
Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #3 with $10.78 million, which is $0.78m off for a 7.8% error.
Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #4 with $10.1 million, which is $1m off for a 10.99% error.
Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #5 with $9.45 million, which is $4.45m off for a 89% error.
Again, Laremy was almost 100% off on this one, but "Just Myself" wasn't fooled as his/her (gotta use real names folks so I get a heads up on your gender) prediction was a really close $4.9 million. Kudos.
Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #6 with $8.13 million, which is $4.03m off for a 98.29% error.
Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #9 with $4.35 million, which is $1.05m off for a 31.82% error.
Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #10 with $3.84 million, which is $1.24m off for a 47.69% error.
Laremy's rank: Laremy picked it to finish #7 with $7.67 million, which is $5.12m off for a 200.78% error.
Laremy's rank: Not Ranked
I must say, I have a bone to pick with Laremy… he made me add Dylan Dog: Dead of Night to the database because he picked it to make the top ten with $4.5 million. Crash and burn! The film managed a paltry $884,625 from 875 theaters. I'm just giving Laremy a hard time of course. Dylan Dog was one of the films I saw advertised most on television in recent weeks, but I guess the folks like me watching the NBA playoffs just weren't buying in to what looked like a terrible movie.
This week also saw Scream 4 dip out of the top ten as it has now made only $35 million domestically, making any chance of a Scream 5 pretty much nil. Oh well, I enjoyed this latest installment quite a bit, which is all that really matters.
Finally, Takashi Miike's 13 Assassins opened in just four theaters this weekend and made $40,200.
All of that now leads us to what is considered the "true" start of summer as next week will see Thor open up its attempted assault on the box-office. I saw some people predicting next weekend already in my Friday post at around $50-60 million. Is that the general consensus?
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Thor was huge OS.
70M OW next weekend for Thor.
Summer has begun, for movies.
Can't Thor beat Fast Five opening??
I suppose a 85-90 million is possible.
If Iron Man could do that three years ago, why not Thor, when the Marvel brand is as popular as ever??
I haven't tracked Thor's progress abroad yet, although it seemed to have a decent start in Australia but at the moment I'm happy with a $50 – $60 million range call for it.
It could go higher of course.
Fast Five, however, has certainly made a splash. I wonder how it will hold (bearing in mind how front loaded Fast & Furious turned out to be) over the coming weeks. Even if it were as front loaded as the last film it should still top $175 million US and if it holds better then could $200 million+ be possible for it?
We'll find out!
Thor will top next two weekends then Pirates Of The Caribbean will rule. Which do you think will come on top: The Hangover Part 2 or Kung Fu Panda 2? I would like Hangover 2 to top.
More likely due to the alledged 3D advantage Kung Fu will top the memorial weekend unless Pirates 4 holds insanely well.
Bridesmaids will dethrone Thor in 2 weeks time. Bridesmaids has got Kristen Wiig in it so the SNL crowd will flock to it.
Meanwhile Thor will lose 3D sites to inevitable Paul Bettany flop Priest.
Worked for MacGruber and Hot Rod, right?
It definetly worked for Mamma Mia and the first Sex & the City. Both, like Bridesmaids, were simmilary female skewering.
Mamma Mia and Sex & the City were both wildly popular existing products before becoming films though, and Mamma Mia's opening weekend was only $28m or so.
I wouldn't say it's impossible for Bridesmaids to break out, or for Thor to be soft in it's second week, but Id still bet on Thor winning that match up right now myself.
Another crazy prediction: Green Lantern = this year's Golden Compass
Unless Green Lantern gets Last Airbender type reviews, it won't be that big of a bomb.
Green Lantern's too big of a property to bomb that hard, but I doubt the film will make much more than $120 million domestic. That's the ceiling for the film IMO.
Early prediction on Thor – $87 million
Just for future reference, I'm a dude and my first name is Christopher. ;)
Early call for next two weeks – Thor opens to $75 million, Priest manages $20 million and Bridesmaids pulls a MacGruber and bombs… Hard.
I doubt Bridesmaids will bomb; it's being promoted well as a raunchy comedy for both men & women (mostly women). If people want to see something much meaner & wittier than Something Borrowed, Bridesmaids will tide them over until Hangover 2.
The difference between Bridesmaids and Hangover 2 is this – the trailer for Hangover 2 made me laugh, the trailer for Bridesmaids did not. I've seen trailers for it in front of three different movies, and not once did the audience respond enthusiastically. It looks mediocre at best and downright terrible at worst.
Woooo! Fast Five is absolutely breathtaking!
Oh, God, the only thing that’s going through my head to describe this movie, it’s like sex with an orgasm at the end of it! Whereas the first four movies were like you have sex but you never get the orgasm. A lot of stopping and starting but… oh, I wish I hadn’t said that.
I think Thor will hit about $60 million.
OT: On what date does the Cannes Film Festival start? The 14th of May?
A great result for Universal. And it was really surprising to find out that this is their highest OW grosser yet. As for Fast Five, had it not been Thor releasing next week, it would have help up better. But now i believe it should drop somewhere in the range of 55-60%. Still, a $200 million Domestic performance should be achieved.
I believe Thor will do well. It should get an opening of around $70-75 million, something like a Star Trek. I am taking Star Trek for comparison because even that was a movie which was expected to put up something in the range of $50-60 million but then the glowing reviews helped it get a better than expected opening. I expect Thor to hold up decently too to finish somewhere in the range of $ 225-240 million Domestic.
Laremy isn't going to do a Summer top grossers just like last year?
That would be fun.
I agree. I hope he does one this year.
You'd think that with the Potter franchise finally ending, it's a foregone conclusion what will be the summer's top grosser.
I originally would have picked Thor to land in the $60-75m range, but The Hollywood Reporter put Thor's overseas weekend at $83m, with a $93m-to-date total. Superhero films usually do better in the US than they do overseas, as the majority of the fans of the character are here. So I'd up the call to $85m, provided the domestic reviews stay as strong as the foreign press kudos. Twitter has certainly been ringing over the weekend with enthusiastic comments from worldwide Thor viewers, so I think buzz this week should strengthen well as a result. There's the possibility of it going higher yet.
It would be good to start the summer out with two back-to-back crowd pleasing hits. Hollywood needs to string together some winners to get people excited about heading to the theater again.
As far as overseas grosses, Thor might be an exception to the rule since it looks and feels much more like a fantasy than a comic book movie, and that's what European audiences no doubt embraced. So its domestic launch might not automatically go higher because of the foreign reception.
Oh, I think all of us who have tried to make these kinds of predictions have learned the hard way by now that nothing is automatic.
It's an interesting point though… How do foreign audiences view Thor? As a superhero film, or as (an admittedly wild version of) Norse mythology?
I hope fast five does well at the box Office. I really liked it. Best car chase scene ever. Thor will do good. It's like all the movies we think might be bad will be good, like fast 5, Thor, the green lantern, transformers 3, and pirates 4.
Also: Hanna will outgross Sucker Punch sometime this week!
I enjoyed the hell out of Fast Five, so I'm definitely happy it did so well. I wonder if it opening so huge will dilute Thor any next weekend. Given how good the reviews for Thor are, I'd say probably not. I think the Star Trek comparison Athar made above makes sense…and that followed Wolverine, which did $85 million. So I'll probably say around $75 million for Thor for now, though I guess 3D could push that up some. Of course Fast Five could have been overestimated a bit, but there's still a chance Thor won't hit Fast Five's OW number. The last time the last weekend in April had a bigger #1 film than the first weekend in May was all the way back in 2005.
Don't think that Thor will beat Fast Five's opening, but if it hits $65-70 million, it'd be considered a success.
Something Borrowed- $14-16 million
Jumping the Broom- $13-15 million (but could go higher).
EW is asking why this franchise is doing so well. I thought back in the day "Tokyo Drift" killed the series. And I saw this about the audience, "35 percent Caucasian, 33 percent Hispanic, 19 percent African-American, 9 percent Asian, and 4 percent other, according to the studio’s exit polls."
In the end, I don't know what Vin and Paul got for this movie, but hold out for more for "Sin Six" (I am just making that up, I am writing the script, where they get together and rob a ruthless banker in Vegas).
Wow, Dylan Dog made less than a million, that's even worse than my $2.3M prediction!
If you look at the performances of Fast Five and Thor, I think there may be a question of which is actually doing better.
Thor has gained $93 million so far out of being launched in 56 Foreign markets, but so far Fast Five has made $81 million out of only 14 Foreign markets and will have it's big expansion next weekend. Next weekend, Fast Five should take the global win, and Thor should take the domestic win. Which is not bad really.
On that level, Thor is actually performing behind that film.
I'm not at all sure what that will mean for it's US launch, however, and certainly the unusually high (at present) RT score should work in it's favour. By that token, the trailers for it are still awful so this may be a case where good word of mouth will build it more than the marketing.
I don't think there's any doubt that Fast Five is doing better on average in direct market competition than Thor. It's obviously a franchise that is still growing in popularity.
I'm not sure how much of a box office explosion it will see in it's next expansion… Despite only being in 14 markets, they are most of the major ones (UK, Australia, Germany, Brazil, Russia, Spain… France and Mexico are added next week, which will be big, though neither film opens in Japan until later in the summer.) It will likely be enough to take back first place at the international box office though.
It's interesting that the unusual success of Fast Five is making people (the studios included) reevaluate how much they expect Thor to bring in when nothing about that film has changed… It's still the launch of a new cinematic character portrayed by a relative newcomer. People kept looking past Fast Five to the start of the "real" summer blockbusters and so the idea that it might do better than Thor makes it seem like something must have gone wrong with the hero film, when in fact it too is so far performing better than most would have expected.
Yeah, it's interesting that there's a debate now over whether Fast Five has now successfully moved back the start of the summer season or not, given Thor has the modern accepted date for it's kick off.
You can't really argue with an $83 million start though!
But at the moment even a cursory look over the web is resulting in quite widely varying guesstimates for Thor. I've seen anything up to and including $100+ million, based on it following a similar opening to Iron Man back in 2008.
But hey, in about 5 days we'll get a clue!
With the May slate I'm actually starting to wonder if the box-office might not in fact turn itself around this month. It's a crowded month, but all of them have appeal to a wide range of people.
Scratch the $83, it looks like Universal underestimated and Fast Five's final haul was $86.1 million instead.
Wow! An upward revision of the weekend estimate. How often does that happen. I'm starting to think Fast Five will hold up better than I thought next weekend. Good reviews, good word of mouth, and the anecdotal evidence of several people having told me they are waiting to see it until next weekend, makes me think so.
Great that Fast Five is doing well (in all areas including overseas).. It is a fun franchise and like MOST summer movies it has what an audience wants (and like most summer movies) we went for the action not the dialog… having said that Ya, Thor kicked butt at the overseas Box office BUT it was a huge wide release. So it has no where to grow now so it will make money but it will slow down since next weekend Fast Five expands overseas.. here though.. I see Thor doing 80 million for sure.. Can't forget the interweaving for the Avengers, so anyone interested in that will see all movies leading up to that… Next weekend Prediction
1) Thor 81million
2) Fast Five 47 million..
SUMMER HAS STARTED>> (The biggest draw for May will be Kung Fu Panda).. guaranteed.
Pirates will do better overseas as per usual for the series but it won't be as big as the others… but 3D will help it it is a perfect series for 3D… it may open stronger than Panda 2 but overall Panda will win (and overseas it will beat the crap out of the inferior Cars 2)..
If universal made thore then it will flop. Wait Marvel is Disney right? I just hope it didnt cost 300 million to make. What does wikipedia say the budget was?
Why are none of the current box office totals showing against the films anymore??
They will. Box Office Mojo was crashing almost every day for the last week and it was slowing my site down so I pulled them recently. They will be back tomorrow.