Box Office - 'Fast & Furious' Stuns with $30 Million Opening Day

Box office numbers can be tricky to predict, even if you have some information at your disposal. When it came time to research how well Fast & Furious might do, I looked at the history of the franchise, competition, number of theaters, and all the rest, and felt it would be a bit below $40 million. It nearly did that much business in one day. So clearly, my projection and everyone else's - which ranged from the mid-30s to the mid-40s - will be completely wrong. Fast & Furious scraped together $30 million in one day, the best opening day of 2009, and in fact, the best opening day since Twilight and depending on how accurate the estimates are, it could be among the top 20 opening days in history, perhaps supplanting Attack of the Clones on the list. In nearly every case, you would look at this number and think the opening weekend will be north of $70 million. The way the box office percentages work, even if it loses 25% today and 30% of today's earnings tomorrow, Fast & Furious will have earned $68 million in its opening weekend. Even if it more closely resembles Twilight through the first three days and loses 40% now and 40% tomorrow, that's still almost $60 million. So at this point, because nobody had any idea the numbers would be this big of Friday, it's tough to project where the film goes from here. I think anything less than $60 million would be hard to do. $70 million seems like a real possibility, but then again, what if Friday wasn't even the main course? Could this movie do $30 million again on Saturday? I'm not saying it can't. We'll give you the full breakdown tomorrow, which should also feature a strong second place showing by Monsters vs. Aliens.

Comments

[knives]

Wow. Has a sequel ever outgrossed previous incarnations like this?

[Tricia]

Took my teenage son to see this move. It really was OK and I am an old broad.
Yes, lots of car chases and crashes but a nice plot that unfolded well.