‘Fast & Furious’ Spinoff ‘Hobbs & Shaw’ To Begin Journey With Around $60M – Early B.O. Projection

Anthony D'Alessandro

Click here to read the full article.

Universal’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw landed on tracking this morning and the expectation is that the film will make between $55M-$65M. The Dwayne Johnson-Jason Statham pic opens on Aug. 2 largely around the world in 64 markets with China coming later on Aug. 23.

Some factors to consider here about the $200M-plus movie: First, it’s a spinoff, hence the lower than typical $97M-plus openings of the last two Fast & Furious movies. Even though Sony’s Spider-Man: Far From Home exceeded its B.O. targets with a 6-day of $185M, there’s still a concern in the distribution/exhibition sphere that we’re in a funky stateside market. Many still wonder whether Disney’s The Lion King will set a July opening record north of $169M+. At the high-end of this early AM projection, Hobbs & Shaw‘s domestic debut would be under such August starts as The Bourne Ultimatum ($69.2M) and Rush Hour 2 ($67.4M). Natch, it’s about Hobbs & Shaw‘s global opening here for Universal: Fate of the Furious two years ago opened to $541.9M, the third highest global opening of all-time, but that was beefed up by China which drew $185M in weekend 1.

More from Deadline

There’s some guidance that Hobbs & Shaw could over-index. Since the launch of the marketing campaign, audience interest continues to grow in key tracking measures. Evidence of this is that the second trailer’s view count grew from the first with the former totaling 284M global views and the second 391M views. That’s rarely seen on second trailers, the most recent time being with Spider-Man: Far From Home. Including the view count from Hobbs & Shaw‘s trailer 3, there have been more than 735M global trailer views to date.

For this summer, Hobbs & Shaw‘s debut is apt to be the best one outside of a branded Disney film or movie based on superhero IP. Year to date, Universal’s Us is the highest-grossing non-Disney, non-superhero film with $71.1M.

Hobbs & Shaw follows Fast & Furious rivals lawman Luke Hobbs (Johnson) and mercenary Deckard Shaw (Statham) who must form an unlikely alliance when a cyber-genetically enhanced villain threatens the future of our world.

The Fast & Furious franchise has racked up north of $5.1B at the WW box office through eight movies and remains Universal’s highest-grossing franchise of all-time. The movies are a huge winner with diverse audiences. On Fate of the Furious, the last pic, African American and Hispanic audiences made up close to half of the entire audience on opening weekend with Asians repping 13%.

 

Sign up for Deadline's Newsletter. For the latest news, follow us on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.