Fast Five opened to an estimated $33.2 million on Friday, according to studio estimates from Box Office Mojo.
Needless to say, this is an excellent start for a fourth sequel of any franchise and even factoring in inflation it looks to be on par with the last film’s opening day attendance (which adjusts to just under $33 million today). IMAX prices are probably boosting Five‘s numbers a bit more, however, its possible that the southern markets were slightly deflated following this week’s disastrous weather outbreaks. With the large urban audiences of Alabama and Georgia being a major part of the franchise’s target demographics, its possible that we could see Fast Five retain a bit more of its audience on Saturday than the last film (which dropped almost 20% on Saturday). However, NBA playoffs could have some say in that as well.
As for the rest of the openers, needless to say the depressed market seems to still have quite a few lingering factors as Hoodwinked Too! opened to just over $1 million and looks to sell considerably fewer tickets over the weekend than the uber-bomb Mars Needs Moms did earlier in the year. Disney’s Prom also came in under expectations with $1.85 million while Dylan Dog won’t even break $1 million for the entire weekend.
Not a particularly great inaugural weekend as far as my predictions went as I considerably over-estimated a few of the holdovers. It looks like most of us had a hard time with a handful of films this weekend, so maybe I can still hope for a top 100 finish in the Derby if nothing else. I’ll have more analysis on the weekend numbers as well a summer preview on Sunday/Monday!
