‘Hobbs & Shaw’ Struts Into Korea With ‘Fast & Furious’ Franchise-Best Opening; WW To Top $400M This Weekend

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EXCLUSIVE: Universal’s Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw zoomed into Korea on Wednesday, scoring the biggest opening day for the franchise, and through Thursday surpassed 1M admissions. Korea is the last market to release before China welcomes the spinoff next Friday, August 23. Through Thursday, the international box office cume on H&S is $267.5M with domestic at $119.6M for a global running total of $387.1M. It will top the $400M worldwide threshold this weekend.

Despite competition from two strong local holdovers in Korea, H&S secured the biggest screen count of the F&F series at 1,270 versus The Fate Of The Furious’ 1,238. On Wednesday, it grossed $2.4M to top the previous Fast title by 81% and F7’s debut by 176%.

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Thursday was Korea’s National Liberation Day holiday which helped put another $4.1M in the tank. Today, the Dwayne Johnson/Jason Statham-starrer added another $2.1M for a running cume of $8.7M.

As we’ve noted all along, H&S has not been expected to outperform its Toretto family-fronted cousins. However, at this rate, Korea is the only major market that is besting the previous F&F movies. When all is said and done, Korea could end up among the Top 5 markets for H&S, which would be a first for the series.

The film debuted with $119M overseas two weeks ago, then put another $60.3M in the tank during its second frame at the international box office last weekend. Still to come on the David Leitch-helmed action/banter bonanza is China. Although H&S is not expected to reach the heights of the previous F&F films in the Middle Kingdom, the franchise is a massive draw, and Johnson and Statham also excel there. It’s China, so we’ll see…

Through Thursday (and not including the early Friday numbers from Korea above) the Top 5 offshore markets are Japan ($19.5M), UK ($17.9M), Russia ($15.7M), Mexico ($14.5M) and Indonesia ($11.6M).

More international box office updates will come through the weekend with a full report on Sunday.

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