Weekend Box Office: ‘Five’ Makes Fast Number One

It’s official: The summer blockbuster season struck early this year. ‘Fast Five‘ pulled in $83.6 million over the weekend, making it the highest opening movie of 2011 so far. The caper sequel surpassed box office predictions, and even bested the opening of 2009’s ‘Fast & Furious‘ by over $10 million, giving ‘Fast Five’ the best opening of the franchise. Shifting its original and collective cast from street racing to heisting proved to appeal to more than just ‘Fast and the Furious’ fans. With unexpectedly positive reviews, strong words of mouth, and a franchise record box office opening, you can expect a ‘Fast Six’ in the very near future.

Walt Disney’s teen girl flick ‘Prom‘ performed much lower than expected with only a $5 million opening. The people have spoken. If you’re going to make a movie for a Disney Channel audience, leave it on the Disney Channel.

Animated kids’ movie ‘Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil‘ also opened much lower than expected, pulling in only $4.1 million. Taking into account that the total includes the more expensive 3D ticket prices, ‘Too’ majorly undergrossed the 2005 original’s $12.4 million opening. The audiences who made the mistake of seeing the first ‘Hoodwinked’ didn’t make that same mistake twice.

The worst nationwide opening of the weekend goes to Italian comic book adaptation ‘Dylan Dog: Dead of Night‘. Feeling like a bad mix of the original ‘Buffy the Vampire Slayer’ movie, ‘Constantine’, and any black and white movie about a gumshoe private dick, ‘Dylan Dog’ opened in the 16 spot with only $885,000. That should guarantee that the previously planned sequels will never see the light of day.

Although the atrocious family flick ‘Hop‘ fell from fourth to ninth place, ‘Rio‘ still held strong by crossing the $100 million mark in second place. As usual, Tyler Perry’s ‘Madea’s Big Happy Family‘ and Disney Nature’s ‘African Cats‘ dropped off 60% from their opening weekend. Neither of those series stays strong in the box office. Other noteworthy box office tanks include ‘Scream 4‘, which landed at 13, and ‘Atlas Shrugged: Part I‘ at 22 on their third weekend.

Discrediting ‘Fast Five’, ads for the next Marvel comic book adaptation (Paramount’s ‘Thor’) claim to kick off summer next week. Can the mighty power of ‘Thor’ domestically keep up with its pre-U.S. international box office success, or will ‘Fast Five’ stay in front? We’ll see next week.

The Top 10:

1. ‘Fast Five’ (Universal) – $83.6

2. ‘Rio’ (Fox) – $14.4 million

3. ‘Tyler Perry’s Madea’s Big Happy Family’ (Lionsgate) – $10 million

4. ‘Water for Elephants’ (Fox) – $9.1 million

5. ‘Prom’ (Buena Vista) – $5 million

6. ‘Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil’ (Weinstein) – $4.1 million

7. ‘Soul Surfer’ (TriStar) – $3.3 million

8. ‘Insidious’ (Film District) – $2.7 million

9. ‘Hop’ (Universal) – $2.6 million

10. ‘Source Code’ (Summit) – $2.5 million

7 comments

  1. With the move towards heists and slightly less focus on driving, Fast Five was actually fairly entertaining. People keep talking about Fast Six, though, but that’s just silly. The sixth film means it’s time for a crossover.

    Ocean’s Furious 22

  2. HuskerGuy

    I laughed every time I saw a trailer for Dylan Dog. It’s performance is just about what I expected.

    Fast Five was a solid popcorn flick.

  3. Fast Five was exactly what the action genre needed, big names, macho men staring each other down (the Rock was freaking HUGE in this movie) and real stunts and barely any CGI crappy action, if there was you could only tell in a couple places, brings me back to the days of 80s action movies, fun, fast and entertaining with nothing holding it back, just enough character and story to move things right along and with a nice twist of an ending (did you stay after the credits?) I cant wait for the sixth one, I’ve gone from an OK fan of this series to loving it now 🙂

      • Luke Hickman
        Author

        But there is no chance in hell that Vin Diesel could ever take The Rock. That was the most fake moment of the movie! I read that Vin Diesel was standing on an apple crate in the scenes where he and The Rock are face-to-face.

        • The most fake thing in the movie? You watched the movie right? Ha ha.

          My personal fake moment was “Hey their faces are unrecognizable, with masks, in the darkness.” “Oh, that doesn’t matter, a few key strokes here, a mouse click there. Ah, there you go. Perfect facial match. How about that.” Bah ha ha.

          • Doesnt surprise me, but it looked more like them over some of the older action movies from back in the day where they had no way of imposing anything over the stunt guys 😉

            Most of that fight was both guys being thrown through walls and out windows and shit and you can bet there were stunt guys filling in for that….eh doesnt matter to me, there are gillion things in that movie that if analyzed make the whole thing fall apart, love the beginning bus crash were “miraculously” everyone lived, yeah right….and then you have the giant off road truck barreling into the side of the train clearly knocking it off the track, but it falls back on perfectly and keeps rolling, that thing would have been derailed when that hit and the list goes on….but who cares, its action entertainment at its best 🙂

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *