The Fast & Furious franchise continues to go strong as it passes another box office milestone.
Fast 9 has now officially made $700 million in box office sales worldwide. Although the movie industry has struggled to cope with the effects of the coronavirus pandemic, this is a good sign if it’s a precursor of things to come. As well as Fast 9, other movies such as Black Widow and A Quiet Place II have also managed to break pandemic box office records, although the overall picture is still not as good as it was pre-pandemic – which isn’t a surprise. Recent polls have found that movie goers are still reluctant to return to theaters amidst the ongoing pandemic, especially due to reports of the complicated Delta variant.
Fast 9 was initially released in May and got off to a good start by all accounts. Domestically, in the United States, it garnered $70 million during the opening weekend. A month later, globally the movie reached the $500 million mark worldwide, and it was the first pandemic movie to achieve such a feat. Still going strong to this day, new figures suggest Fast 9 has now reached another very impressive milestone.
Forbes confirmed that Universal has reported Fast 9 has actually passed the impressive $700 million mark at the global box office. This in itself is a very good number even for pre-pandemic standards – so execs at Universal will be very pleased no doubt. In comparison to Black Widow, which earned approximately $370 million worldwide, Fast 9 has evidently made almost double that. Granted Black Widow also raked in another $120 million plus from the Disney Plus subscription service, but Fast 9 has outperformed Black Widow’s total gross revenue regardless.
Putting aside Fast 9’s global performance for a second, the movie also raked in a total of $172 million domestically in the United States. This was on par with the last Fast & Furious spin off movie Hobbs & Shaw which was released in 2019 before the pandemic. Hobbs & Shaw made approximately $174 million domestically. Fast 9 is one of the few summer blockbusters to have theatrical exclusivity, and the signs going forward are looking good for major franchise films to perform well at the box office if these numbers are anything to go by. It should also be noted that Fast 9 reached the $700 million mark within the first month of the movie release, so there is still potential for this figure to grow.
Interestingly, Fast 9 performed even better in China than it did domestically, where it made a total of $216 million. Even then that was apparently lower than was expected as the Chinese audience allegedly weren’t big fans of the movie.
Analysts have claimed that box office performance generally will not revert to pre pandemic levels before 2024, however Fast 9’s numbers could be indicative of the fact that we may return to normality as far as movies are concerned sooner rather than later. Next up we have Marvel’s Shang Chi which will give us a further indication of what box office performance will look like going forward. The better these movies do, the more beneficial it is to us as film fans as we won’t have to keep worrying about delayed releases.
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