Big just got bigger. Fast & Furious 9 races to biggest movie opening since December 2019
Fast & Furious 9 delivers highest opening weekend release audience since Jumanji: The Next Level in December 2019
Fast & Furious 9 is the 5th movie release in the last 3 months to outperform audience expectations
Momentum in audiences will continue to grow with 4 new big blockbuster titles launch every week in July; Black Widow, Space Jam: A New Legacy, Snake Eyes, and Jungle Cruise
Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel
Big just got bigger at the movies as New Zealanders flocked to cinemas around the country to watch the newly released Fast & Furious 9. The movie was watched by the biggest weekend release audience, since Jumanji: The Next Level on Boxing Day 2019.
The opening of Fast & Furious 9 saw Cinema deliver its biggest non-holiday opening weekend performance since pre-pandemic, delivering a 4-day audience of 179,000 and up 91% week-on-week.
Fast & Furious 9’s turbocharged numbers eclipsed 2019’s Fast franchise spinoff, Hobbs & Shaw’s opening weekend by +30%, undeniably proving the pent-up demand for blockbuster content on the big screen.
Proving that the cinema is big business when it comes to successfully connecting with hard-to-reach demographics, a huge 77% of the opening weekend’s audience were aged 14-39.
These figures are only the start of Hollywood’s big comeback, with several big-budget cultural moments slated to drop over the next six months. Furthermore, the blockbuster opening weekend sets a new benchmark for audience levels and marks the return of consumer confidence in the cinema environment.
Val Morgan Cinema Sales Director New Zealand, Matt Tremain says: “Fast 9 is just the latest big 2021 title to smash our forecasts and deliver audiences above 2019 numbers. These numbers prove that the appetite to get back into the cinema is undiminished and that when content returns so do the audiences”.
“We are heading into the best six months of content we have ever had, with a blockbuster Hollywood movie each and every week. We are confident this strong audience trend will continue from July all the way to December, with the release Black Widow, Shang Chi Legend of Ten Rings, No Time to Die, Eternals, Top Gun: Maverick, The Boss Baby 2, Venom: Let there be Carnage, Ghostbusters: Afterlife, House of Gucci, Dune, The Matrix 4, and Spider-Man: No Way Home…to name just a few”.