2 Fast 2 Furious Starts Strong

June 9, 2003

With just one movie opening wide, this could have been a slow week at the theatres. And while the box office did drop from last week, it was more than 50% above the same weekend last year.

The pseudo-sequel 2 Fast 2 Furious blasted off the starting line with nearly $20 million on Friday, but it Saturday figure dropped by 6.5%. And the final weekend number was $50.5 million, $2 million below Sunday’s Studio estimate. Those figures would suggest this movie will have horrible legs, but the drop off was better than the original’s and the internal multiplier was only slightly worse. Still, with weaker reviews and lower user ratings on both The Numbers and IMDb it is unlikely that 2 Fast 2 Furious will be able to maintain its early numbers. And considering its production budget is double the first’s, that’s bad news for the studio.

Finding Nemo dropped to second place, despite leading for Saturday and Sunday. Its second week drop-off was greater than Monsters Inc., however Finding Nemo did have much stronger competition. Either way, $46.6 million for its second week is still great.

In third place was Bruce Almighty with $22.4 million. The movie’s total of just over $170 million in only three weeks is amazing, and it will make a profit from its US theatrical distribution alone, even after advertising and the theaters' take is taken into account.

Down to fourth, but holding up well was The Italian Job, which was down just a little more than 32% to $13.2 million. Granted, part of that is due to the nearly 250 theaters added to its count. But even taking the increased theater count into consideration, The Italian Job dropped less than 40%.

The Matrix Reloaded finished fifth with just $9.2 million, well below the original’s take at this point in its run. Even the IMAX version opening was a disappointment taking in only an estimated $700,000 on 39 screens.

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Filed under: The Matrix Reloaded, The Italian Job, 2 Fast 2 Furious