'Fast & Furious 6' races through $120 million opening

Over Memorial Day weekend, the clear winner was Fast & Furious 6. The latest model in this octane-fueled franchise turned in the best opening yet for the series. Over the four-day period, Fast & Furious 6 earned $120 million, two-and-a-half times as much as its closest competitor, The Hangover Part III. The three-day opening was also $10 million higher than Fast Five, which debuted to $86 million in April 2011. It's rare to see franchises endure and get better over so many incarnations, but that's the case here. In its favor was an "A" rating in exit polls and high attendance among minorities, who likely connect with the diverse cast. A third of ticketbuyers were Hispanics.

While Fast & Furious 6 did better than the sequel before it, The Hangover Part III had an opening weekend that was over 50% lower than The Hangover II. In the five-day period since its Thursday opening, the comedy earned $63 million, compared to the $135 million earned by its predecessor during the same period. That's under the estimated $80 million projected by Warner Bros., while still a decent showing for an R-rated movie over the Memorial Day holiday.

Opening in fourth place, Epic scored a $42.6 million opening. Animated features usually play a long game, as families show up months after a film's release. Kids gave this movie an "A+" rating, so that may help the tale about forest creatures in coming weeks. In a month, however, Monsters University will start to siphon away family audiences.

This weekend was a good one for indies. The summer usually yields at least one indie hit, and this weekend saw the release of a few contenders. Before Midnight debuted to $322,000 over the four-day period, and its three-day per-screen average was $50,000 per location, a great start for the indie romance that is also the third film in a series. Most specialty films don't inspire sequels, but when they do, it appears they reap the same returns as mainstream franchises. The well-regarded

Fill the Void also made a strong opening, averaging nearly $20,000 per screen in three locations. The story of an Orthodox young woman sheds light on a religious world often closed off from outsiders, heightening its appeal. In its second week, Frances Ha went up 300%, pulling in $546,000 from 60 locations, which posted an average of $9,000 per screen. That's great news for the Greta Gerwig-led indie, which could end up being director Noah Baumbach's biggest success yet.

In seventh place, Mud rose 9% over the four-day period for a total of $2.4 million. With a cumulative total over $15 million, the movie is now Roadside Attractions' best-performing release.

On Friday, Will and Jaden Smith topline the apocalyptic After Earth, magicians pull off a heist in Now You See Me, and indies The East and The Kings of Summer join the fray.

'Fast & Furious 6,' 'Hangover III' and 'Epic' race for Memorial Day audiences

Last year on Memorial Day, the only major player was Men in Black 3. This year, three wide releases are competing for audiences. That could mean more people show up to the movies, but it also means there will be some cannibalization between films.

The Hangover Part III and Fast & Furious 6 have a somewhat overlapping audience: young males. The Hangover Part III (3,555 theatres) opened yesterday to try to get a jump-start on the weekend, and also because it's the weaker film. Tracking only 22% positive on Rotten Tomatoes, this "unstylish action
flick with comic asides" (as described by our Michael Sauter) is not faring well with critics. More importantly, many viewers were disappointed by The Hangover Part II. If people already feel as if they've been burned by the franchise, it's unlikely they'll turn out again. In a way, though, it seems this comedy can't win. The sequel was criticized for being too similar to the first film, yet Sauter faults the three-quel because it "changes up the franchise formula—and not in a good way." It seems like these sequels just can't win, so Warner Bros. is making a good decision to make this the (alleged) end to the franchise.

Fast & Furious 6 (3,658 theatres) is the franchise that keeps on giving. It seems like viewers have had more faith in the franchise than the studio, because screenwriters have to keep resurrecting characters they prematurely gave the boot. In this movie, it means placing a character in Japan to fill in a plot hole from a previous sequel, according to critic Daniel Eagan. Like 74% of Rotten Tomatoes critics, he enjoyed the "long, loud and expensive" movie, which "delivers
what series fans want, although not quite as quickly or cleverly as
before." Fast & Furious 6 will be the fastest out of the gate this weekend, and its four-day total could easily top $100 million.

The first animated film in over two months, Epic (3,882 theatres) should be seeing kids and their parents lining up for an outing. Yet there's a feeling among forecasters that this animated feature will have a tepid reception, especially if parents are savvy enough to realize there are plenty of other animated features in the pipeline for this summer, including Monsters University, Despicable Me 2, Turbo, Planes, and The Smurfs 2. Our critic, Frank Lovece, had the opposite reaction, calling Epic "one of the best features so far from Blue
Sky Studios," and the movie itself full of "thematic richness."

It's rare for an indie romance to turn into a trilogy. But that's the case with Before Midnight (5 theatres), which picks up on the romance between Ethan Hawke and Julie Delpy, this time while the duo is in Greece . Also in the mix this weekend is the latest from documentarian and workhorse Alex Gibney, We Steal Secrets: The Story of Wikileaks (4 theatres), which Eagan dubbed "brilliant but maddening."

After the four-day weekend, we'll be back on Tuesday to assess the impact of this jam-packed weekend.

Director Chris Wedge teases clips of this summer's 'Epic'

The mystery behind Epic's Leaf Men has partially been solved. Yesterday in a movie theatre in Manhattan's Times Square, Ice Age director Chris Wedge previewed clips from the latest Blue Sky Animation feature, Epic. The May 24 release from 20th Century Fox melds comedy with action-adventure in a way that appears to please children (judging by the giggles I heard afterward) and maybe even adults too, though I didn't see enough of the movie in the preview to tell if the story

would coalesce. The premise is that in the forest, there live tiny fairy-like creatures called Leaf Men, which are just one species in a whole range of tiny creatures invisible to the human eye. One scientist (voiced by Jason Sudeikis) has spent his whole life trying to identify these creatures, but it's his college-age daughter (Amanda Seyfried), who he has neglected for most of his years, who's shrunk down to Leaf Men-size and embroiled in a race-against-time that will preserve their existence. That's because the gross, fungi-like Boggans want to destroy the forest and the Leaf Men who protect it.

Epic has such intricately designed characters inhabiting a unique, parallel world, it feels almost literary. At the same time, with so much going on, the clips Wedge showed often followed completely different characters. I didn't even know that the daughter was the main character until Wedge finally said so midway through the talk.

The 3D trailer at the end of the presentation, which will be shown in front of The Croods this Friday, was the only finished, polished piece of animation shown. Wedge described giving reporters "a peek behind the green curtain," and that couldn't be more true. While it was easy to observe what was missing during scenes that skipped frames or used production artwork, the coloring and resolution were off, as was the sound mix, which includes a Danny Elfman music score, which Wedge noted had just been added. The visuals made me feel like I was like watching a later '90s or early aughts CG-animated feature. The type of lighting sparkle and crisp resolution that I've observed in Tangled and How to Train Your Dragon was only there in the trailer.

Watching Epic made me slightly nostalgic for another forest-set animated tale that was popular during my childhood (although not a hit at the box office), FernGully: The Last Rainforest. That film also feature tiny creatures struggling against evil in the forest, and at the time the idea was simply magical. I think it's safe to say that however Epic plays among adults, the world it presents will enchant kids. And did I mention there are two very goofy slugs (voiced by Aziz Ansari and Chris O'Dowd) who do funny things with their eyeballs? Their antics made adults and kids in the audience laugh out loud.