Sometimes you sit and wonder just how in the hell a kind-of half-baked film about pinching cars could wind up having eight movies in the franchise. But then you remember that the pitch for the new one would’ve included the line “at some point Vin Diesel tries to bash The Rock with a submarine while they’re driving armoured trucks on a glacier,” and then all you can do is silently nod while opening your wallet to pour out every last cent you have.
Turns out that’s been a scenario repeated literally hundreds of thousands of times over across the globe, and now ‘Fate of the Furious‘ sits atop the Hollywood throne as the film with the highest grossing opening weekend of all-time.
The eighth film in the franchise, which mystifyingly refuses to spell it ‘F8‘ on literally every piece of advertising, opened in cinemas across Australia and the rest of the world late last week. And it’s left fellow money-sponge franchise ‘Star Wars‘ in its dust.
The Vin Diesel/Dwayne Johnson biffo pulled in a staggering US$532.5million (or around AUD$702million) in box office receipts in its first weekend alone.
That’s over half a billion US dollars just from people buying tickets to see a movie in cinemas. Un. Bloody. Real.
The huge pull of the film saw it eclipse the previous worldwide mark set by ‘Star Wars – Episode VII: The Force Awakens‘ back in 2015. The first instalment of the new ‘Star Wars‘ franchise pulled in a hefty US$529million, meaning ‘F8‘ eclipsed the Skywalker saga by a full $3.5million.
But here’s where things get tricky: US domestic interest in the film appears just about dead in the water. Across the US and Canada, ‘F8‘ only managed to pull in just over US$100.1million, falling well short of the bar set by predecessor ‘Furious 7‘ and way off the best-ever mark which still firmly belongs to ‘The Force Awakens.’
The bulk of ‘F8‘ tickets have been sold in international markets, much like the last film. South America, China, South-East Asia, and here in Australia are all particularly strong markets for the film, meaning it’s likely this one will also eclipse the mythical billion-dollar box office mark as well.
Whether that literal pile of cash will be enough to pour water on the real-life beef between Diesel and Johnson, however, remains to be seen.
‘Fate of the Furious‘ is in cinemas across the country right now.
Source: Sydney Morning Herald.
Photo: Fate of the Furious/Universal Pictures.
