Box office: Hobbs & Shaw wrecks top spot with $60 million domestic debut for Fast & Furious franchise

Hobbs & Shaw, the first of the Fast & Furious spinoffs, has nabbed the long-running action/adventure franchise another box-office win. The film opened to $60 million (securing the coveted No. 1 spot) from 4,200 North American theaters, with international estimates hovering around an extra $120 million. Compared to the series' last entry, 2017's The Fate of the Furious, it's not a mind-blowing domestic debut. For comparison, Fate brought in nearly $100 million during its first weekend in North America. Nevertheless, positive reviews and the massive star power of Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson will probably be enough to leave the flick with a sizable chunk of change in the coming weeks.

Directed by David Leitch (Deadpool 2), Hobbs & Shaw co-stars Johnson and Jason Statham as Luke Hobbs and Deckard Shaw, two former enemies who must join forces to bring down self-proclaimed "Black Superman" Brixton Lore (Idris Elba). The screenplay was co-written by Drew Pearce (Hotel Artemis) and Chris Morgan. Morgan has penned every single Fast and Furious installment since 2006's Tokyo Drift.

“One of the staples and anchors of Fast & Furious movies is family,” Johnson recently told SYFY WIRE. “It was very important that we paid homage and delivered a movie that still had a sense of reverence to the Fast & Furious world that had big action set pieces, cool cars, cool characters, kick-ass men and women. But also, it was important to have our own identity. It was also important to have our own tone and unique identity. Unique comedy, unique skill sets, if you will.”

Disney's "live-action" remake of The Lion King was pushed into a wildebeest stampede and trampled into second place for the first time since it opened on July 19, with $38 million. Helmed by Iron Man's Jon Favreau, the latest reimagining, which utilizes top-of-the-line motion capture and CGI technology, has already passed $400 million in domestic sales, so it's not a terrible dethroning—pun very much intended.

Credit: Disney

Now in its second week, Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in ... Hollywood took the third North American slot with $20 million. The Tinseltown fable set against the backdrop of the infamous Manson murders has been garnering a ton of great feedback from critics and audiences alike. Indeed, the film, a love letter to the entertainment industry, is already being hailed as the writer/director's best and most personal effort to date.

Two other genre holdovers from previous weeks are Spider-Man: Far From Home and Toy Story 4. The former, the first live-action Spidey movie to pass $1 billion globally, added another $7.7 million to its domestic cache, which now stands at $360 million. Pixar's fourth Toy Story flick barely fell behind Peter Parker & Co. with an extra $7.2 million, boosting its North American tally to $410 million.

(via Variety & Box Office Mojo)