How impressive is the weekend haul for
Fast Five? Well, it's the highest opening in the
history of Universal Pictures (besting
The Lost World's debut of $72.1 million back in 1997),
the biggest April opening ever (topping the last
Fast & Furious, which made $71 million),
and the biggest 2011 opening by far. What do I mean "by far?" Well, if you combined the
next two biggest openings (
Rio and
Rango), you still wouldn't have this kind of success.
This means that there will most assuredly be a
Fast Six (writer Chris Morgan has already
been hired to pen another installment, and if you stayed through the credits you can see
where it's headed) and it also means that Paramount, Marvel, and Disney should be a little
worried as this weekend's big entry,
Thor, will be headed into unfriendly territory. Both movies are vying for the same young male demographic, and even though it has made an obscene amount of money, not everyone who wanted to see
Fast Five got to see it this
past weekend.
That could lead to a very tempestuous box office showdown next weekend. It'll be interesting
to see how it plays out. I'm curious about
Thor, not only in terms of the movie's quality
(I'm seeing it tomorrow), but to see if anybody at all even knows who Thor is, let alone is
anybody interested in seeing a glittery, big budget movie starring him? He is a B-level
superhero, and while no one seems to acknowledge this, it's very true.
Elsewhere in the Top 10, things weren't so kind to two other debuts – Disney's teenage romp
Prom (which got surprisingly solid critical notices), landed at #5 with a paltry $5 million. The studio was positioning this as an heir apparent to
High School Musical, but the teens just weren't buying… Or if they were buying it was "a ticket to
Fast Five.
The other debut in the Top 10 was
Hoodwinked Too!, the sequel to the popular 2006
animated film which looks like it was almost entirely rendered on a 30-year-old PC. It flopped
in at #6 with $4.1 million. Keep in mind that this movie was finished years ago and was
originally slated to be released in January 2010 (there were even McDonald's toys that
shipped nationwide, timed to coincide with a movie that never came out)… Something tells
me that the Weinstein Company should have bitten the bullet and just put it out on Blu-
ray/DVD and forgotten about the hastily slapped-on 3D conversion. While it might seem that
every animated movie that comes out is a guaranteed blockbuster – this year alone we've
seen
Gnomeo & Juliet,
Hop,
Rango, and
Rio all bring in the dough –
Hoodwinked Too! is proof positive that it just isn't the case.
Besides that, it was business as usual at the North American box office. It is interesting to
note that
Insidious, which the studio claimed was the "most profitable movie of 2011"
(because its budget was so minuscule – this weekend it scooped up another $2.6 million),
continues to bring in the bucks and looks like it will finish out its box office run well above the
big budget, heavily hyped
Scream 4 (which eked out another $2.1 million for tenth place).
What people need to remember is that
Insidious is terrible.
The Top Ten:
1. Fast Five (Universal) - $86.2 million
2. Rio (Fox) - $14.4 million
3. Madea's Big Happy Family (Lionsgate) - $10 million
4. Water for Elephants (Fox) - $9.1 million
5. Prom (Disney) - $5 million
6. Hoodwinked Too! (Weinstein Co) - $4.1 million
7. Soul Surfer (Sony) - $4.1 million
8. Insidious (FilmDistrict) - $2.6 million
9. Hop (Universal) - $2.2 million
10. Scream 4 (Weinstein Co) - $2.1 million