Fast & Furious 6 screeched to the top of the North American charts on an estimated $98.5m (£65.1m) and will cross $100m when the four-day Memorial Day weekend numbers come out on Monday. It fuelled the biggest Memorial Day weekend on record and set a record international opening weekend for distributor Universal on $158m (£104m). That means it has already crossed $275m (£182m) worldwide after two weekends, factoring in a limited international foray last weekend when it broke records for distributor Universal in the UK.
The franchise picked itself up with Fast & Furious in 2009 and ended up grossing $363m worldwide – considerably higher than the box office for the first two and far more than Tokyo Drift. By 2011, Fast Five roared out of the gates and was praised by critics, particularly for the ridiculous bank vault sequence through the streets of Rio.
Fast Five went on to gross over $625m worldwide. Its $1.1bn global box office dwarfed anything done by the previous movies, but the 007 series has thrown up critical darlings before. The same cannot be said of the Fast and Furious franchise.
So the sixth movie has arrived and Fast & Furious 6 clearly wants to be even bigger than its predecessor – and there’s every sign that it will be. The franchise has broad appeal among a number of age groups and with both male and female viewers, and is highly popular with North America’s Hispanic audience, the fastest-growing portion of its filmgoing public.
Universal has not missed a trick and last month announced it was pulling out the stops to release the seventh installment in 2014.
