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Friday, May 24, 2013

'Fast & Furious 6' and 'Hangover 3' Target Biggest Box-Office Weekend in History


Fast & Furious 6 should win the three-day weekend with ease, though the four-day period is in some doubt. Thankfully, as my predictions don't include Memorial Day, the picture isn't as murky.
My cursory research indicates the largest box-office weekend ever came in December of 2009, Avatar-land, when the top twelve came within $100 thousand of $260 million. I've got this weekend at $259 million as well, but I'm coming in over tracking numbers.
My feeling is that Star Trek Into Darkness didn't hit all the key demos in the way that Fast & Furious 6 and The Hangover Part III do. Throw in Epic for the family dollar, plus a holiday weekend, and you've got the recipe for pandemonium at the multiplexes this weekend.
My call for Fast & Furious 6 domination is also based on the overall quality of this version, plus the prior versions. Fast Five was largely liked, whereas The Hangover Part II has taken on a certain measure of derision since 2011. Plus, I liked Fast & Furious 6 more than The Hangover Part III. They are both fun, but I'd only see the Vin Diesel / Rock version again. Lastly,Fast is PG-13, The Hangover Part III is R. Game, set, match.
When it comes to the numbers, I have Fast 6 at $86.4 million and Hangover 3 a distant second with $62.1 million. Yes, I'm going well over tracking on both.
As for Epic, it looks as though it has been hung out to dry. It will get some dollars -- I'm predicting$34.2 million -- for being a family film, but it's hard to predict anything nearing greatness for this title. We can only hope the production budget was small.
How say you? It could be the most interesting weekend we get all year, so don't be shy!
Current Streak: Fifteen weekends in a row.
Chances of Streak Being Broken: 30 percent.
Reason: I see audiences rewarding the Fast franchise and slightly punishing the Hangover franchise. For the three-day weekend I feel confident.
Major Theater Chain (MTC) Tracking
Fast & Furious 6: $70 million
The Hangover Part III: $56 million
Epic: $33 million
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We'll have the actual counts in Sunday's wrap-up article.

Laremy's Box-Office Predictions for May 24 - May 26, 2012


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Fast & Furious 6


If you blundered into the shooting of“Fast & Furious 6,” for instance, you are almost surely walking now: If the flip-your-car-over speedsters didn’t wreck your vehicle, the giant tank surely did.
Most of the familiar faces are back for this latest bacchanalia of reckless driving, including Vin Diesel as Dominic Toretto. Toretto is relaxing in fair-weather retirement, living off the big score of the previous movie in the franchise, when he is called back into service, as it were, by Luke Hobbs, the federal agent who both pursues and admires him and his band of renegades.
Hobbs is again played by Dwayne Johnson and his biceps, which get enough camera time that you expect the closing credits to include two arm wranglers, one for each. Mr. Johnson has seemingly been in every movie released in the last two years and has a reality television show, “The Hero,” coming on TNT. But he knows how to deploy his half-dozen expressions — the sly grin, the single-eyebrow arch — and is still a welcome sight, where other actors might by this point be overexposed.
He also doesn’t hijack this movie the way his character did in the recent “G.I. Joe: Retaliation.” “F&F 6” is still primarily about Toretto and his buddies. It is no spoiler to say that Michelle Rodriguez, seemingly killed off in an earlier film, returns as Letty Ortiz(she’s in the opening credits), Toretto’s tough-as-nails love interest. The gimmick here is that she’s now working for the opposition, mercenaries led by Owen Shaw (Luke Evans). Oh, and she has amnesia and doesn’t remember Toretto.
That provides just enough plot to propel the movie from car chase to car chase. The real question here is whether Justin Lin, the director of this film and three of its predecessors, can top himself. The climactic sequence of his “Fast Five” involved a preposterous scene in which racecars towed a giant bank vault through the streets at high speed.
Here Mr. Lin offers two tricks. The bad guys have flip cars, sleek machines whose armor-plated front ends are designed so that when they strike another vehicle, it goes spinning through the air. And in a later chase, Shaw and friends pull out a formidable tank that turns any vehicle it encounters into squished scrap metal.
These flashy smashies and a climactic sequence, in which the good guys try to prevent Shaw from taking off in an airliner by tethering their cars to it, make the movie a satisfying thrill ride, at least on a par with the earlier installments. A nice twist near the end is well disguised, and a coda hints at what’s to come in Part 7.
“Fast & Furious 6” is rated PG-13 (Parents strongly cautioned). It’s a dangerous-driving clinic.
Fast & Furious 6
Opens on Friday nationwide.
Directed by Justin Lin; written by Chris Morgan, based on characters created by Gary Scott Thompson; director of photography, Stephen F. Windon; edited by Christian Wagner and Kelly Matsumoto; music by Lucas Vidal; production design by Jan Roelfs; costumes by Sanja Milkovic Hays; produced by Neil H. Moritz, Clayton Townsend and Vin Diesel; released by Universal Pictures. Running time: 2 hours 8 minutes.
WITH: Vin Diesel (Dominic Toretto), Paul Walker (Brian O’Conner), Dwayne Johnson (Luke Hobbs), Michelle Rodriguez (Letty Ortiz), Jordana Brewster (Mia Toretto), Tyrese Gibson (Roman Pearce), Chris Bridges, a k a Ludacris (Tej Parker), Sung Kang (Han Lue), Luke Evans (Owen Shaw), Gina Carano (Riley), John Ortiz (Braga), Gal Gadot (Gisele Harabo) and Elsa Pataky (Elena Neves).

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