Fast X Is Off To The Races With $320 Million Global Box Office Debut

The bigger a movie's budget is, the higher the stakes are as it heads into theaters — and few movies have had higher stakes than "Fast X," with a production budget that ballooned to an eye-watering $340 million, and another $100 million spent on marketing. The film pulls out all the stops, from retconning Jason Momoa's villain into the events of "Fast Five," to bringing back multiple characters for surprise cameos, and even rolling a flaming one-ton metal ball through the streets of Rome.

Will that investment pay off at the box office? At first glance, the numbers look a little grim. Variety reports that "Fast X" is heading for a $67.25 million opening weekend — less than "F9: The Fast Saga" ($70 million) but more than "Fast & Furious: Hobbs & Shaw" ($60 million). 

It's important to keep in mind, however, that the success of the "Fast & Furious" movies has increasingly been built outside of the domestic box office. Two franchise entries so far — "Furious 7" and "The Fate of the Furious" — have grossed more than a billion dollars worldwide, and in both cases they grossed more than $1 billion in overseas ticket sales alone, before even accounting for domestic box office. Typically, more than three-quarters of the overall gross for "Fast & Furious" movies now comes from foreign markets.

On the overseas front, Variety reports that "Fast X" is heading for a $220 million opening weekend, while The Hollywood Reporter projects a $252.7 million debut. The discrepancy could be down to whether or not Wednesday's numbers are being included; the movie opened on Wednesday in many international markets, but opening weekends are typically measured from Thursday previews to the end of Sunday. So, we're looking at a $287 global million opening weekend and a week one total in the region of $320 million.

"F9: The Fast Saga" was one of the rare success stories of the pandemic-era box office, releasing in summer 2021 and grossing $726 million worldwide by the end of its run. China did a lot of the heavy lifting overseas, delivering a massive $136 million opening and a $216.9 million total. So, when it comes to the global total for "Fast X," China will be just as important to watch as the domestic numbers. It's worth noting, however, that studios only receive around 25 percent of ticket sales in China, versus around 50 percent from domestic theaters. 

Per Deadline, "Fast X" had grossed $68.7 million overseas through Friday, with an estimated $37 million of that coming from the Chinese box office. If it keeps pace with "F9" and "Hobbs & Shaw," we can expect the tenth main franchise entry to gross somewhere between $700 million and $800 million worldwide by the end of its run, with around $170-180 million of that coming from the domestic box office. That would be enough to make most movies a hit, but there's that $340 million production budget to consider. With that in mind, it's looking unlikely that "Fast X" will break even by the time it leaves theaters.

Another recent mega-budget release, "Avatar: The Way of Water" (which reportedly cost around $350-400 million to produce), started out with a domestic opening weekend of $134 million and ended up swimming all the way to $2.3 billion worldwide. But "The Way of Water" had the James Cameron touch giving it long legs at the box office, whereas "Fast X" will probably be more of a sprint than a marathon.