Take that, Tyrese? Everyone may call it Hobbs & Shaw, but the full name of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham's spinoff movie is Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw, leading with a franchise tie in a way that Dark Phoenix never did for its X-Men release.
Hobbs & Shaw had a big opening for an action movie, but it paled in comparison to most other Fast & Furious movies, leading to a rehash of Tyrese's beef with The Rock. Tyrese poked fun at the opening numbers, and The Rock responded.
The Rock also just pointed out Hobbs & Shaw's new record -- it just had the biggest opening day for any movie in the franchise in South Korea. That country is the last stop on the road to China's release this coming Friday, August 23. That opening is expected to be huge, since China gave The Fate of the Furious almost $400 million on its own.
According to Deadline, Hobbs & Shaw opened in Korea on Wednesday and made $2.4 million that day, topping The Fate of the Furious' openingby 81% and Fast and Furious 7's opening by 176%. The movie made close to $9 million in South Korea by Friday.
Granted, that's not massive money. But Fast movies do make huge money overseas, and South Korea is the only major market so far to have Hobbs & Shaw beat the previous Fast and Furious movies. It would be a first for the franchise if Korea ends up in the top 5 markets for the movie.
Dwayne Johnson always keeps a close eye on the international markets, since that's where the big money really comes in these days. He appreciated that Koreans really turned out for Hobbs & Shaw. Here's what he posted on Instagram:
Thank you Korea for making @hobbsandshaw break another franchise record. Not too shabby for our second week of box office biz.
Not too shabby, indeed. All eyes will be on China next, so we'll keep an eye on the August 23 release. The previous two Fast movies made almost $400 million there alone. Hobbs & Shaw isn't expected to do THAT well, but Dwayne Johnson does want to make more Hobbs movies, and the bigger the box office, the better the chances that will happen.
The Rock has made it clear he hopes to bring A-list cameo stars Ryan Reynolds and Kevin Hart back as members of the team in the next Hobbs movie. It may have helped this weekend's domestic box office that fans now know those stars are in the movie. The cameos were secret for opening weekend, but now they are open members of the cast, and adding them to trailers and other promotion for a sequel will surely help that next film's opening weekend.
Hobbs & Shaw just made another $14.1 million this weekend at the domestic box office, taking #2 to new movie Good Boys. The Fast spinoff just passed the $400 million mark worldwide with a current total gross of $437,041,600. How high will that number go once China gets involved? We'll see, starting next week.
Meanwhile, Fast and Furious 9 is now filming with Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, and company. The Fate of the Furious, aka Fast 8, made $1,236,005,118 worldwide, with more than $1 billion of that from the foreign box office and "only" $226 million from the domestic box office. So you can see why The Rock keeps a close eye on the international numbers for his spinoff.
