‘F9’ — the latest entry in the ‘Fast & Furious’ saga soars at the box office
The US box office debut of F9 soared as the latest entry in Universal’s Fast & Furious saga.
The ninth installment of Fast & Furious opened to a mighty $70 million from 4,179 North American venues. Of course, this comes after many delays over the course of a year and a half.
By far, it comes as the biggest start for a movie at the US box office since the onset of COVID-19. This gives some much-needed momentum to the movie theater business to the big screen. Aside from that, this has also become an homage to hulking men, speedy cars, and gravity-defying stunts. It has started struggling to rebound as audiences begin to feel comfortable returning to their local multiplex.
F9 becomes the latest blockbuster-hopeful to set a new box office benchmark for COVID times. Prior to this weekend, Paramount’s A Quiet Place Part II held the pandemic-era opening weekend with $48.3 million in inaugural ticket sales.
Attendance hasn’t returned to pre-COVID levels and the Canadian box office. Hence, the film wasn’t expected to reach the opening weekend heights of its franchise predecessors. This accounts for part of North American revenues, still almost entirely shut down.
In terms of the Fast & furious series launches, F9 has a slight edge on the 2019 spinoff Hobbs & Shaw. This generated $60 million and ended its theatrical run with $173 million in the US and $759 million globally. The Fate of the Furious (2017) was the previous film in the core series. It opened to $98 million and ultimately grossed $226 million in North America and $1.2 billion worldwide.
The 2015 entry Furious 7 marked a franchise high, posting a huge $147.2 million in its first three days of release. This is on its way to $353 million at the domestic box office and $1.5 billion globally.
David A. Gross says the inaugural weekend of F9 is “an excellent opening in an extraordinary series.” He runs the movie consulting firm Franchise Entertainment Research. Gross reiterated,
“During the last month, moviegoing has shown flashes of real strength, including this weekend and A Quiet Place 2, but it has also been tentative. F9 and A Quiet Place 2 are the cleanest reads of what the business can do now—both strong series and pure theatrical releases/no streaming.”
Gross refers to films such as Disney’s Cruella and Raya and the Last Dragon. Also, the recent Warner Bros. titles like The Conjuring: The Devil Made Me Do It and Godzilla vs. Kong. These movies have chugged along on box office charts. However, their grosses come with an asterisk. This is due to their availability on streaming platforms.
Alternatively, options such as A Quiet Place Part II and F9 benefitted from the fact that moviegoers can only watch them in theaters. After 45 days on the big screen, A Quiet Place Part II will move to the fledgling streaming service Paramount Plus. On the other hand, F9 will become available on premium video-on-demand platforms after a similar period of time.
Overseas, F9 remained a force with international audiences as ticket sales surpass the $300 million mark. The movie added another $38 million from 45 foreign markets, boosting its tally to $335 million internationally and $405 million globally.
There are COVID-era restrictions and consumer hesitations. Hence, F9‘s overall box office totals will likely fall short of past Fast installments.
However, despite this, the action-adventure didn’t cost any less to produce—or market and promote on a global scale. That means the $200 million-budgeted film will have to sell plenty of online rentals, in addition to movie tickets, to get in the black
