By Sarah Sluis
The automobile industry may be in decline, but the automobile? Never. In the highest opening of the year, and the highest April opening ever, Fast & Furious earned a whopping $72.5 million this weekend,
surprising industry experts, who had never seen anything bigger in April than the $42 million opening of Anger Management six years ago. The film was expected to open in the $40-50 million range, but instead brought in an estimated $20,950 per screen in its record-breaking finish. The opening weekend also bests the entire box-office gross of the previous sequel The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. The return of the original star Vin Diesel no doubt helped, but the robust performance of the film could also be viewed as an impact of the recession. While home entertainment competes with the theatre box office, the very fact that seeing a movie involves getting out of the house could work in the industry's favor during a period when many of the unemployed are stuck at home looking for a job. I'm curious to see if theatre owners see a lift in attendance Monday through Friday, as unoccupied workers seek some diversion during the week.
Below Fast & Furious, Monsters vs. Aliens earned a little more than half the amount of last week, $33.5 million. The 3D film will likely remain in the top ten for several weeks to come, and should taper off its drop as 2D screens are removed from the run and profitable 3D screens remain.
The other new picture of the week, Adventureland, came in at number six to earn a light $6 million. Opening on just 1,862 screens, the comedy didn't have the presence of Greg Mottola's previous film, Superbad.
Overture's Sunshine Cleaning broke into the top ten in its fourth week of release, adding 312 screens to its 479-screen run and earning $1.8 million. The star power of Amy Adams and Emily Blunt, as well as a marketing campaign that alluded to the black comedy's Little Miss Sunshine roots, have filled theatres, despite its small run.
The rest of the returning films dropped between 38-58%, a reasonable range. Two week-old releases The Haunting in Connecticut (#3, $9.5 million) and 12 Rounds (#9, $2.3 million) dropped the most, while comedy I Love You, Man (#5, $7.8 million) retained audiences with just a 38% drop. Sci-fi thriller Knowing (#4, $8.1 million), romantic spy movie Duplicity (#7, $4.3 million) and family film Race to Witch Mountain (#8, $3.3 million) rounded out the top ten.
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