‘Fast and Furious’ Takes Huge Opening Weekend- Box Office Results 4/3-5/09

I was expecting the new action movie Fast and Furious to be #1 this weekend at the box office. I did not predict, however, the actual results-Furious took a whopping $72.5 million during its first run, beating its competitor Adventureland by over $60 million. It beat the Adam Sandler/Jack Nicholson Anger Management's $42.2 million as well, having the greatest April box office debut of all time. The Vin Diesel action thriller helped Hollywood gross an estimated $185 million this weekend-beating the same weekend last year by 65%. Fast and Furious made more than the previous movies in the series, Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, The Fast and the Furious and 2 Fast 2 Furious. Polishing off Disney/Pixar's Cars' $60.1 million opening weekend as the highest grossing car-themed movie, it also topped any other action-based movie. The Bourne Ultimatum (making a $69.3 million opening) was apparently no competition for Paul Walker and Vin Diesel. According to Universal Studio's exiting polls, 96% of the audience had seen the original The Fast and the Furious, 94% had seen the second and 89% had seen the third. In addition, 57% of the audience was male, 59% was under 25 and 46% were Hispanic. In the past, only Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ had a larger debut.

The previous box office winner Monsters vs. Aliens dropped a predictable 44% to $33.5 million, in line with fellow Dreamworks animations Magagascar: Escape 2 Africa, Kung Fu Panda and Horton Hears a Who! 3D screenings of Aliens held up only slightly better than regular theaters; down 43% from last weekend. IMAX 3D showings down only 39% to an estimated $3.1 million. Grossing $105.7 million in ten days, it dusted off Watchmen, down another 60% to $1.1 million in its fifth weekend.

The Haunting in Connecticut steeped more than a horror film regularly would, yet staying in the same position in the top 10-dropping 58% to $9.6 million, $37.2 million in ten days. The Amityville Horror (2005) had dropped only 46% at this time. Although, other movies had lost a lot more, among those The Messengers, Boogeyman and The Exorcism of Emily Rose. And in fourth place, Knowing dissolved 45% to $8.1 million. Its total does well, however, making $58.2 million in its 17-day run in the box office.

I Love You, Man continues to do relatively good again this weekend in fifth with $7.9 million. The comedy is doing better than Role Models and Forgetting Sarah Marshall, whose grosses were less than where I Love You, Man now stands. Dreamworks Studios expects it to do better over the next few weeks during Spring break.

Released just this weekend, the Greg Mottola comedy Adventureland did poorly these past 2 days, grossing a mere $6 million. It was advertised as being a lot like Superbad, considering it had the same director; however the television spots showed only a few childish gags. Adventureland did worse than previous R-rated comedies Waiting… and The Girl Next Door. Sunshine Cleaning lost some shine after expanding to 479 more theaters nationwide. The "feel-good" comedy managed to drum up $1.9 million, $4.8 total in its 24 days of limited release.

Here are the estimated box office results according to BoxOfficeMojo.com-