Box Office Battle (April 3rd)

Fast & Furious races past the competition.

BY COLIN ENQUIST

Universals Pictures’ Fast & Furious raced past the previous April opening record with $72.5M, held by Anger Management which opened to $42.2 million in 2003. Reuniting Vin Diesel, Paul Walker and Michelle Rodriguez helped the studio surpass the original The Fast and the Furious which grossed $40.1M on opening weekend. 2 Fast 2 Furious opened around $50M while the third film in the series, directed by Justin Lin who also directed the current film, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift brought in $24M. The three films have totalled around $333M worldwide, with Fast & Furious surpassing the entire gross of Tokyo Drift’s earnings.

Last weeks leader, Monsters vs. Aliens, dropped 43.5% in ticket sales during its second weekend. The 3D animated film took in $33M bringing the total around $105M. DreamWorks Animation made the film for $175M.

The Haunting in Connecticut had an enormous fall in ticket sales but still came in third, losing 58.5% from last week. Still managing to grab slightly over $9.5M, raising the total earnings around $37M for the two weeks it has been released.

Alex Proyas’ and Nicolas Cage’s sci-fi flick Knowing earned another $8.1M in fourth place and has reached a three week total of $58.2M.

Fifth place film I Love You, Man added another $7.9M. The Paul Rudd and Jason Segel comedy has made a total of $49.3M in three weeks.

Miramax Films’ Adventureland, the comedy about a recent college grad who ponders the future after taking a job at a local amusement park took in $6M on its opening weekend finished in sixth place. The film stars Jesse Eisenberg, Ryan Reynolds, Kristen Stewart, Martin Starr, Paige Howard, Kristen Wiig, Bill Hader and Margarita Levieva. Gregg Motolla wrote and directed the film.

The bottom four films were Duplicity ($4.3M), Race to Witch Mountain ($3.3M), 12 Rounds ($2.3M) and Sunshine Cleaning ($1.8M).