The Fast & Furious series has been one of the more successful franchises at the box office in recent years. However, Hobbs & Shaw will be an interesting test case, as it's the first spinoff the series has seen. Will the movie do as well as the main series even without the majority of the cast? From early tracking, it looks like Hobbs & Shaw is poised to do the franchise proud, as it could see an opening weekend of around $100 million.
Officially, BoxOfficePro is setting the opening weekend range of Hobbs & Shaw to somewhere between $75 million and $115 million. That's a pretty wide stretch, but it's early, as the movie doesn't hit theaters for nearly two months. We'll see the estimates tighten up the closer we get to release.
If Hobbs & Shaw comes in at the low end of that spread, it will technically put Hobbs and Shaw in only fifth place of the eight movies, but that's only because the franchise has, generally speaking, done really well up to this point. Fast and Furious, the fourth film in the franchise, saw an opening weekend of $70 million, so even the worst case scenario as Hobbs & Shaw doing better than that.
$100 million is a number on par with where the franchise has been recently. In fact, that number would actually give Hobbs and Shaw the second highest grossing domestic opening weekend ever. The Fate of the Furious the last film in the series to be released, has the second highest opening weekend in Fast & Furious history at $98 million, so Hobbs & Shaw is looking to compete at that level.
The top domestic opening weekend in the franchise goes to Furious 7 which saw a total near $150 million. That film is also the best opening weekend that Hobbs & Shaw stars Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham have ever seen.
If Hobbs & Shaw is looking to replicate the box office of The Fate of the Furious then one can guess the studio could not be happier. Fate became the second movie in the series to break the billion dark mark globally. If fans respond to the spinoff as well as they've been responding to the rest of the movies lately, then you can probably get ready for even more spinoffs.
Hobbs & Shaw will also be competing with some of the highest grossing August movies ever. The top opening weekend in August is currently Suicide Squad at $133 million. It doesn't look like Hobbs & Shaw will quite get there, but it could take the number two spot for August ahead of the first Guardians of the Galaxy movie which did $94 million in its domestic debut.
In both of those previous cases of August releases, Suicide Squad and Guardians didn't have to deal with much competition and Hobbs & Shaw is in the same boat. The "summer movie season" is largely wrapping up by August and so we don't see a lot of major releases. However, for the tentpole movie that does decide to open later, than can be an audience still looking to get out of the heat has fewer choices, which can bolster the box office.
Hobbs & Shaw hits theaters August 2.
