‘Fast & Furious’ Spinoff Is Off to Slow Start in U.S. Debut

(Bloomberg) -- “Hobbs & Shaw,” a spinoff from Universal Pictures’ successful “Fast & Furious” film series, got off to a slow start with North American fans, while still giving the studio one of its biggest openings of the year.

• Officially titled “Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw,” the film featuring Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, brought in $60 million from U.S. and Canadian theaters, researcher Comscore Inc. said Monday. That was in line with the studio’s forecast, while analysts were projecting around $65 million.

Key Insights

• Forecasts had been coming down, based on lower-than-projected ticket presales. Box Office Pro, for instance, previously expected $89 million. But even the reduced total represented the biggest opening of the summer for a movie not made by box-office leader Walt Disney Co.

• International markets play an outsize role for the “Fast & Furious” films -- and they delivered an additional $110 million in sales this past weekend for “Hobbs & Shaw,” according to the studio. With a production budget estimated at $200 million, the movie division of Comcast Corp. will be counting on continued strong foreign sales.
• Johnson and Statham, veterans of the series, are joined by new additions Idris Elba, Vanessa Kirby and Eiza Gonzalez, 18 years after debut of the first film in the “Fast & Furious” series. The movies have generated more than $5 billion in global box-office sales.
• A strong summer led by Disney’s “Avengers: Endgame,” “The Lion King” and “Toy Story 4” has helped theaters come back from a slow start to the year. Domestic sales this past weekend rose 6.7% from a year earlier, Comscore said.
• The only Universal weekend debut to top “Hobbs & Shaw” was “Us” with $71.1 million in March.

Get More

• See the weekend release schedule here.
• See Box Office Pro’s long-range forecast.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hailey Waller in New York at hwaller@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: James Ludden at jludden@bloomberg.net, Rob Golum, Kevin Miller

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