Summer isn’t officially over yet, but the Fast & Furious spin-off, Hobbs & Shaw, represents the last big heave of the summer before studios begin burning off lower budget films as we head into the dog days of August. Hobbs & Shaw did their August slot proud, kicking up around $60.8 million in proceeds. That’s comparable to other openings in the first weekend of August, like Rise of the Planet of the Apes ($54 million), The Bourne Ultimatum ($69 million), and Signs ($60 million). It’s perhaps not quite as big as Universal might have hoped, given the $200 million production price tag and the overall budget (including marketing) upwards of $360 million. The good news is, it’s in line to double that opening overseas ($120) for a $180 million worldwide bow, though — as Deadline notes — it’ll need to make around $600 million worldwide to break even. That’s definitely doable; the last Fast and Furious film, The Fate of the Furious, scored $1.2 billion worldwide, although Hobbs and Shaw opened considerably lower than Fate’s $97 million and the $147 million opening of Furious 7 in 2015.
Reviews were in line with the previous Fast and Furious entry, The Fate and the Furious (67 percent on Rotten Tomatoes), although audiences weren’t quite as in love with it (an A- Cinemascore compared to the A of Fate). Whether it can parlay a good Cinemascore into long August legs remains to be seen, although competition for the rest of the month isn’t exactly fierce — the only direct competitor for the rest of August is probably Angel Has Fallen, another one of those Gerard Butler disaster films.
Its bigger competition may actually come from Quentin Tarantino’s Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, which is playing similar to Christopher Nolan’s Dunkirk, a late July opening that saw only modest drops for weeks. OUATIH dropped only 51 percent in its second weekend, adding $20 million to bring its ten-day total to a tidy $79 million, meaning it will reach its $90 million production budget before its released overseas in a couple of weeks.
Hollywood came in third place, behind second place The Lion King, which continues to do exceptionally well, racking up another $38 million to bring its three-week total to $431 million, surpassing the original’s $422 million run. It’s also already crossed the $1 billion mark worldwide. Fourth place Spider-Man: Far from Home has also crossed $1 billion worldwide, coming in fourth stateside this weekend with $7.9 million to bring its total to $360 million. Fifth place goes to Toy Story 4, which earned $7 million and cross the $400 million mark stateside. It’s earned around $957 million worldwide.
The bottom five, all holdovers, basically fed on box-office scraps. Yesterday earned $2.7 million in its sixth weekend to bring it to $67 million. The Farewell added 275 theaters and earned $2.2 million in 400 theaters nationwide. Crawl fetched $2.1 million to bring its total to $36 million. In its 11th week in the top 10, Aladdin earned another $1.9 million to bring its total to $350 million. It’s also one of four Disney movies to earn $1 billion this year, with a fifth, Toy Story 4, not far behind. Finally, Annabelle Comes Home rounds out the top ten, earning $885,000 to bring its total to $71 million. Meanwhile, lower down on the list, Lionsgate’s John Wick 3 — Parabellum also hit a couple of milestones this summer, surpassing $150 million stateside and $170 million overseas for a worldwide gross of $320 million.
After three weeks in a row in which there was only one wide release each weekend, next week will see the release of a whopping five films in 1500 theaters or more. Dora and the Lost City of Gold is likely to lead all the new entries, followed by Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark, The Kitchen starring Melissa McCarthy and Tiffany Haddish, a Milo Ventimiglia talking dog movie, The Art of Racing in the Rain, and Brian Banks.
Source: Deadline, Box Office Mojo
