MEMORIAL DAY FRIDAY BOXOFFICE: “Fast & Furious 6” Runs Over “The Hangover 3”

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It wasn’t even a contest, let alone a drag race.

FAST & FURIOUS 6 (Universal) had a sensational $36M Thursday night/Friday, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  That’s better than the $34.4M opening for Fast Five, and thanks to the holiday weekend, 6 should have a far better 4-day start that Fast Five‘s $92.4M.  possibly even as high as $120M, which could make it the 4th highest Memorial Day opening in history.  In addition, it already has $53.4M overseas, with much more to come.

Ironically, if Fast & Furious 6 becomes the #4 Memorial Day opening, the movie it’ll displace will be The Hangover Part II (which made $103.4M in the Fri-Mon period, plus another $31.6M on its Thursday opening day).  That will make 2 Hangover movies the car franchise has outpaced, since THE HANGOVER PART III (Warners) was nowhere close on Friday, with a reported $15.5M.  That’s only a few dollars above the opening Friday for GI Joe: Retaliation earlier this year, which managed $56M in its first 5 days.  Warners is estimating $63.5M for the same period, but even that may be optimistic.  Whether or not the studio really planned to make this the final installment in the franchise, now it certainly will be.

Also opening on Friday was the animated film EPIC (20th), which had an OK $10M day.  That’s less than the $11.6M The Croods made on its non-holiday weekend opening day, although Epic, too, will benefit from the long weekend and should get to $45-50M by Monday, with the family market to itself for now.

STAR TREK INTO DARKNESS (Paramount) had a $9.5M Friday, down 56% from last Friday and down 20% from the 2d Friday for its 2009 predecessor.  The weekend will stabilize, especially with a stronger-than-usual Sunday, and it should have around a $45M 4-day weekend, which would put it more or less even with the 2009 Star Trek.

As for the longer holdovers, IRON MAN 3 (Disney) had a 45% Friday-to-Friday decline to $5.2M, on its way to perhaps $375M in the US by Monday, and THE GREAT GATSBY (Warners) dropped 47% to $4M, with about $120M likely by Monday.