Is Fast X a Flop?

A little over two months after its world debut (it came out in Italy at the end of April), and over six weeks after its wider launch (in the U.S., China and other key markets), without much further to go, the Fast and Furious sequel Fast X is still short of the $700 million mark. (At last report it in fact had only $691 million grossed.)

The figure is notably lower than what the preceding F9 made during the pandemic-depressed year of 2021 in current dollars ($726 million), never mind inflation-adjusted real dollars ($820 million in May 2023 dollars)--by which measure it is 16 percent down. Compared with the series' last "normal" release, the eighth film The Fate of the Furious it is down by over half in real terms (that movie made $1.24 billion in 2017, equal to $1.54 billion today), and scarcely better than a third of what the franchise made at its peak with Fast Seven in 2015 (over $1.5 billion in real terms, and about $1.95 billion in May 2023 dollars).

The result is that, however much one tries to grade the film's performance on a curve ("Not every movie has to make a billion dollars!" goes the retort), the gross of Fast X has to be recognized as a significant comedown from past films in the franchise--and a problem given that it cost enough to make a $700 million gross a serious problem. With the film's budget reported as $340 million, my guess according to the formula I previously discussed is that even on the most optimistic calculation it needed $800 million+ before getting near the break-even point even after the home entertainment and other revenue streams are counted in, with a billion dollar gross likely a necessity.* (No, not every movie needs to make a billion dollars. But when they cost north of $300 million they don't make much sense as a financial proposition otherwise, and the studio bosses don't make these things for their or anyone else's health.)

Naturally I think the film has a shot at next year's Deadline list of "biggest box office bombs," except that competition is very, very intense here, with the even less well-performing Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, The Flash and other such films also in contention for spots.

Considering that I think Deadline should make the list longer--give us the list out to ten or even more places this year rather than the usual five, just as they do with the most profitable films. (Really, 2023, and especially the summer of 2023, is shaping up to be that bad.)

* Counting in, besides production, promotion and distribution all the way through home entertainment, TV, streaming, etc., a big-budget movie tends to cost its producers at least twice, and often three times, its production budget, giving us a figure in the range of $700 million to $1 billion in the case of a $340 million film. A movie making $700 million or so at the box office might see the equivalent of half that in theatrical rentals (48 percent seems typical these days, so call it $335 million), and perhaps the equivalent of 80-90 percent of that in the post-theatrical outlets, coming to another $240-$280 million or so. This works out to somewhere around $600 million, which can easily leave a nine-figure gap between what was spent and what came in in the form of revenue.