Warner Bros. was smart to move The Hangover Part III to open one day earlier than previously planned and in opening it opposite Fast & Furious 6 they also managed to create for themselves an excuse, should the third film in the Wolfpack trilogy fail to live up to the numbers Part II brought in.
We’ll begin with a look at Fast and Furious 6, obviously the sixth film in the popular franchise starring Vin Diesel and Paul Walker and ever since the return of the two actors in Fast & Furious, the franchise has seemed unstoppable. Fast Five brought in $626 million worldwide after an $86 million opening and Fast 6 is looking to crush that number.
The film opened to the tune of $98.5 million domestically and $256.5 million worldwide. Estimates suggest it will end the four-day Memorial Day weekend with $122.2 million domestically. With Fast & Furious 7 already expected to begin filming this summer it’s clear Universal isn’t going to let this money sit on the table long as it’s already slated for a July 11, 2014 release.
In a distant second is the poorly performing Hangover 3, which opened 53% below the number registered by Hangover 2 and well below Laremy’s lofty $62.1 million prediction. The film opened on Thursday and has so far brought in $54.2 million with $42.4 million of that attributed to the three-day weekend. It’s expected to hit a $63 million Memorial Day weekend.
Having missed both Fast 6 and Hangover 3 due to being in Cannes, I can already tell you I’m not planning on seeing the latest Hangover, but I will be going to see Fast 6 very soon.
When it comes to the family dollar, Fox’s animated feature Epic brought in a respectable $34.2 million on a $100 million budget.
Elsewhere, Star Trek Into Darkness and Iron Man 3 are holding on nicely with $38 million (46% second weekend drop) and $19.4 million ($367.5m domestic cume / $1.14 billion worldwide) respectively.
The other big story of the weekend you won’t see in the top ten, but it’s one of my favorite films of the year and it opened in only five New York theaters. Richard Linklater‘s Before Midnight brought in $274,000 over the course of the three-day weekend, tallying a $55,000 per theater average. I covered the franchise extensively and hopefully it has you excited to see it when it finally hits your city.
EXTRA: Explore Greece with this location map for Before Midnight!
The top ten for the three day weekend has already made over $251 million collectively and this will ultimately be the largest Memorial Day weekend ever with estimates pegging it somewhere around $320 million, which would destroy 2011’s $276 million four-day weekend.
Looking over Thursday’s predictions, Laremy was light on Fast 6, drunk on Hangover 3 and spot-on with Epic. On the reader side of things, here’s the breakdown for the weekend’s three new wide releases:
- Fast & Furious 6 – Driver predicted $93.2 million
- The Hangover Part III – Chris Etrata predicted $37 million
- Epic – coltonhaynes22 & CJohn predicted $33.5 million
I hope I have that right, a lot of you were quite close and very much in the same range. You can look over all the reader predictions here and I really have to get to work on setting up a program to do this for me… it’s coming!
Next weekend things are slowing down a little, though I’m sure Fox is hoping After Earth is big, but I’m more interested in seeing if Now You See Me is any good. The East and The Kings of Summer are also hitting theaters, but only in a limited roll-out.
How do you think next weekend will play out? Another #1 spot for Fast 6 or can Will and Jaden Smith top it with After Earth? Should be interesting to see how these hold over, especially with Star Trek, Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby continuing to hold on with less than 50% drops.
