Fast & Furious 6, Hangover 3 to Team Up for Hot Memorial Day Box Office

Vin Diesel action flick projected to win potentially record weekend, with critically maligned Bradley Cooper comedy sequel pegged for a strong second

By Joal Ryan May 22, 2013 7:05 PMTags
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Fast & Furious 6 plus The Hangover Part III should equal lots—and lots—of box office.  

"It looks like we're definitely headed for a Memorial Day record," says BoxOffice.com editor Phil Contrino.

The Fast & Furious sequel, opening in some theaters as early as Thursday night, is expected to take first place with a projected Friday-Sunday gross of about $100 million.

The new Hangover installment, which bows in previews tonight, is pegged for second, which can be its own sort of win if the comedy hits its three-day target of $70 million.

Add in the new CGI family film Epic and the holdovers Star Trek Into Darkness, Iron Man 3 and The Great Gatsby, and Hollywood should surpass the combined $230 million that the Hangover Part II-led box office reached over the 2011 Memorial Day weekend.

The road to glory, however, could come with a couple of hitches.

For one thing, The Hangover Part III is getting reviews just as rotten as Part II, which opened big, but saw its momentum domestically thwarted by bad buzz.   

And then there's Star Trek Into Darkness, which last weekend was expected to take the rebooted franchise into new territory but instead felt its reverse thrusters fire.

With so many testosterone-driven movies at the Memorial Day multiplex, Contrino says the Trek sequel could be the one that gets muscled out.

"The market right now is way too male-centered, and that's going to hurt [Into Darkness]," Contrino says. "I wouldn't expect it to rebound."