Over the weekend, Universal Pictures‘ The Fate of the Furious set the record as the biggest opening of all time with $532 million in global box office. That kind of mula goes a long way to settling feuds like the one Dwayne Johnson reportedly had with Vin Diesel during filming of the sequel, and now TMZ is reporting that The Rock has indeed squashed his beef with Diesel and WILL return as Hobbs in Fast 9. Although the end of the film left the door open for Johnson to sit the next one out, it seems The Rock’s need for speed is just too great.
The Fate of the Furious opened bigger than all the previous Fast & Furious films. Internationally, in its first weekend, it beat the lifetime totals of The Fast and the Furious ($62.9M); 2 Fast 2 Furious ($109M); The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift ($96M) and Fast & Furious ($208M) and Fast Five ($401.3M). The Fate of the Furious marked the second-highest domestic opening in the series’ 16-year history, spanning eight titles, behind only 2015’s Furious 7, which earned $147.2 million its first weekend.
There are still four more territories for Fate to open in: Serbia & Montenegro on April 20; Poland on April 21; Romania on April 21 and Japan on April 28.
The F. Gary Gray-directed The Fate of the Furious stars Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Jason Statham, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Nathalie Emmanuel, Elsa Pataky, Kurt Russell, Scott Eastwood, Charlize Theron and Helen Mirren. It has been referred to as the first part of a new, concluding trilogy for the long-running series.
