Box office update: ‘Fast Five’ posts April’s largest opening day ever with $33.2 mil on Friday

Vroom! Onomatopoeic openings aside, Friday’s box office consisted of two groups: Fast Five and everything else. Universal’s $125 million street-racing action film — the fifth in the Fast and the Furious franchise — collected an estimated $33.2 million on Friday, including $3.8 million from Thursday midnight showings. That result gives Fast Five the largest opening day ever in April, passing its predecessor Fast and Furious‘ $30.6 million opening-day tally in 2009. Fast Five, which stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, and Dwayne Johnson, is on track to finish the weekend with about $78 million. Assuming the PG-13 movie does so, a whole slew of other records will be set: April’s biggest opening weekend (beating Fast and Furious‘ $71 million debut); Universal’s best opening ever (passing The Lost World: Jurassic Park‘s $72.1 million); and, naturally, 2011?s top debut to date (destroying Rio‘s $39.2 million opening from two weeks ago).

Fast Five provided a much-needed boost to a box office that’s been struggling so far this year. Case in point: The weekend’s three other new releases all posted underwhelming numbers. Disney’s PG-rated Prom landed in fifth with $1.9 million, and is on pace for a $5 million weekend. Luckily, the teen drama cost the studio only $8 million to produce. The Weinstein Company’s Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil, however, had a reported budget of $30 million, and managed to collect just $1.1 million on Friday. The animated fairy-tale sequel should finish the weekend with around $4 million. By comparison, the original Hoodwinked opened to $12.4 million in 2005. And the Brandon Routh-starring horror comedy Dylan Dog: Dead of Night could only muster $270,000 on Friday from 875 theaters.

Holdovers saw steep drops from Easter weekend, when most kids had Friday off from school. Rio, the box-office champion for two weeks, fell 66 percent for $3.6 million on Friday. The animated tropical-bird adventure should pass the $100 million mark on Sunday. The Tyler Perry comedy Madea’s Big Happy Family plummeted 70 percent for $3.1 million. That’s a normal second-weekend decline for the multihyphenate filmmaker. And the circus romance Water for Elephants slipped 58 percent to earn $2.9 million. Check back here on Sunday for the complete box office report.

1. Fast Five — $33.2 mil
2. Rio — $3.6 mil
3. Madea’s Big Happy Family — $3.1 mil
4. Water for Elephants — $2.9 mil
5. Prom — $1.9 mil
6. Hoodwinked Too! Hood vs. Evil — $1.1 mil

source