‘Fast and Furious 8’ sets global box office record, goes past Bollywood releases in India
NEW DELHI: Hollywood action franchise latest, set a global record for the opening weekend, taking in $532.5 million across 63 countries. The Vin Diesel-starrer beat space opera latest, which earned $529 million in the opening weekend in 2015.
A large part of the credit for that goes to China, where
has already racked up a massive $135 million in its first two days of release, according to a
report.
,has
also did better in the US, making $247 million compared to
$100 million.
also ranks as the biggest April debut on record and the alltime sixth-highest-grossing movie worldwide.
In India too, the F. Gary Gray-directed movie has done well.
It netted about ₹47 crore until Sunday with paid previews starting Wednesday and remained on track to perhaps overtaking the seventh instalment, which was the first Hollywood film to cross the ₹100 crore mark in India when it released in 2015.
“While most Hollywood films tend to perform well primarily on the Saturday and Sunday of the opening weekend, ,has had one of the biggest openings for a Hollywood movie on a working day, i.e. Thursday,” said Ashish Saksena, chief operating officer, cinemas at online ticketing site BookMyShow.
“The metros and major cities contributed significantly more to the collections but this could also be attributed to higher ticket prices. Other regions showed uniform bookings as well, indicating a lot of excitement.”
Part of the well-established
franchise that has enjoyed universal appeal after the release of the fifth instalment in 2011, the movie did better than recent Bollywood releases such as
that hit screens alongside the Hollywood film and earned ₹11.48 crore till Sunday, or slightly older releases such as
and which have managed ₹35.64 crore and ₹27.08 crore, respectively, during their theatrical runs so far.
“The success of the film definitely has to do with the brand value (of the franchise),” said independent film trade and business expert Girish Johar, who is predicting a ₹70 crore first week for
“Plus, India is in love with action and cars right now, like it was with animals at one point.”
There is more to the movie than the action, say the distributors.
“We didn’t peg entirely on the action,” said Sarabjit Singh, general manager, Universal Pictures India International, distributors of the film. “If you see, there’s a great deal of story and fun behind the film and so our target audience was primarily the youth.”
Singh said the company opted for a big pan-India release in about 1,222 screens and forged a slew of partnerships: with English movie channel Sony PIX, exhibition chains PVR and Cinepolis, mobile wallet firm Paytm, online fashion retail company Myntra and electronic products retail chain Croma.
has been dubbed in four languages, including Kannada, which is a first for a Hollywood release.
To be sure, the success of Hollywood films in India may be attributed to the evolution of the overall market that began with in 2015.
According to the Indian Media and Entertainment Industry Report 2017 released by the Federation of Indian Chambers of Commerce and Industry and consultancy firm KPMG, gross collections of Hollywood films grew by around 10% in 2016 over the previous year.