Fast and Furious 6 *Cheesy Puns To #1 [Weekend Box Office]

Shizz went Kablewie this Memorial Day weekend as Fast and Furious 6 *crashed into first place at the box office with $120M.

FF6‘s take dwarfed Fast Five‘s handsome score of $86M back in 2011.

Though it had the benefit of both opening over a holiday weekend and a cache of good will from its predecessor, Universal should probably thank the mishandling of The Hangover 2 more than either.

Given the choice between a reliable, cliche action/adventure and a potentially depressing “comedy,” America voted with its feet and chose Vin Diesel’s engorged forearms over Zack Galifianakis’ distended belly.

Having picked against America this week (normally a safe bet), I can easily admit I wish I’d seen FF6. Something I never thought I’d say.

I am, however, proud to say I took in Richard Linklater’s Before Midnight and that more than turned around the depression The Hangover 3 left me with. Let’s see how much Before Midnight made this weekend…$247K…oh God…depression returning. Deep breaths. Wait, only 5 theaters for a per screen average of $49K, best of any release?

Depression subsided. Phew.

The Hangover 3 came in second place with a weekend total of $63M, proving the audience cared a hell of a lot more than anyone involved in making it.

That’s down from the $103M total it racked up over the same three day weekend in 2011.

The movie is awful for more reasons than I want to go into here but suffice it to say that word-of-mouth should smother this rooster to death within a few weeks.

Good.

Star Trek Into Darkness gained a little ground in its second week, earning $47M.

I say it gained ground because it opened a little below the first one but caught up to be in a virtual dead-heat.

Both made around $155M after their first 12 days in release.

Over lunch today at Stout, a friend of mine put it best about the marketing of STID. “It’s kind of like The Dark Knight if they didn’t tell anyone The Joker was in it.” Why would you hide that?

I don’t understand the decision but it doesn’t look like Paramount will have to consider it too long anyway since STID is guaranteed to…I’m sorry about this…”live long and prosper.”

Epic happened too. Enough to squeeze into fourth place at $42M. I don’t have kids so I’m not even going to pretend I know anything about this flick. Here’s the trailer just in case:

Rotten Tomatoes has it at a 62%, which for an animated feature is a little on the low side. With a production budget of around $100M (w/o P&A), unless the foreign market picks up the slack, this one could have trouble making its money back in the theater.

Rounding out the top five is a movie you’ve already seen, possibly twice, Iron Man 3.

The Shane Black directed Marvel juggernaut grossed another $24M to add to its domestic total of $372M. If you add up the entire bundle from over seas, you’re looking at a grand total of $1.14B. That’s BILLION.

Much like The Avengers last year, it’s nice to see a solid effort clean up instead of an Alice in Wonderland or a Transformers style spectacle.

The cheapest thing to do, solidify your script, is too often the one thing these hyper-budget flicks can’t seem to do right.

Fortunately, Iron Man 3 isn’t one of them.

From Box Office Mojo