By Scott Mendelson, Contributor
Coming off relatively successful prior installments, both The Hangover part III and Fast and Furious 6 could arguably be expected to secure two of the bigger opening weekends of the summer 2013 season. The Hangover part III opened with $85 million over its Fri-Sun portion of its Memorial Day weekend 2011 debut, pulling in a total of $137 million over its Thursday-to-Monday debut, good for the second-best five-day total and Fri-Sun total for an R-rated film (behind the $144 million five-day total and $91 million Fri-Sun debut of The Matrix Reloaded). Fast Five opened with $86 million during the last weekend of April 2011, a record for an April debut and the largest Fri-Sun opening in Universal’s history. Both films earned over $200 million domestic and well-over $500 million worldwide. The sheer goodwill for Fast Five sets Fast & Furious 6 up for a monster debut under normal circumstances. And if critics and (to a lesser extent) audiences felt that The Hangover part II was basically a warmed-over remake of The Hangover, the promise if both a very different kind of plot and the fact that this is absolutely the finale of this particular trilogy arguably compensates with most of the burn out from part II. So yeah, under normal circumstances, both of these films targeted mostly young men would be on course for sky-high debuts. Except these are not normal circumstances. Both of these films are opening on the exact same day, over this upcoming Memorial Day weekend.
