Fast & Furious 4 Destroys Box Office Records

HOLLYWOOD, California — After opening last Friday, Fast & Furious went on to gross a nitro methane-stoked $72.5 million over the weekend. That’s not only the biggest box office take of any film on its opening weekend this year, but the largest opening any movie has ever had in April. Ever — as in, since time began.

Opening on 3,461 screens across America, F&F brought in $30.5 million on Friday night alone. According to Deadline Hollywood Daily’s Nikki Finke, the haul was as much as a third greater than NBC Universal itself had dared hope. And it ranks as the biggest opening of any automotive-themed film ever, easily surpassing the $60.1 million Pixar’s animated Cars brought in when it opened in 2006. Throw in the receipts from other countries where F&F opened and the total gross rises to $102.6 million.

“This just doesn’t happen like this, folks,” summarized Finke, “even with a great marketing and distribution campaign supervised by Adam Fogelson: Hollywood is in shock.”

And it pretty much guarantees there will be a fifth episode of the brazenly exploitive series.