F9 Drives Fast & Furious Franchise To Biggest Opening Day Ever In Korea

F9 (aka Fast & Furious 9) is revving up the box office, in only the way that the Fast and the Furious franchise can. F9 is already out in international theaters and debuted with $3.4 million on opening day - the best debut for any Fast & Furious film in that particular international market. F9 also marks the biggest theatrical opening for any film in Korea since the COVID-19 pandemic hit last year; the previous record-holder was Peninsula ($2.9M), the sequel to the breakout hit Korean zombie-horror flick, Train to Busan. If nothing else, it looks like F9's long delay will have been worth it.

F9 was originally supposed to hit theaters in April of 2019 but was held back in order to make room for Fast & Furious spinoff film Hobbs & Shaw, which let Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson and Jason Statham's franchise anti-heroes buddy up for their own flick. F9 was then set for release in May 2020, but when the pandemic forced Hollywood and movie theaters to go on lockdown, Universal pushed the film back nearly a year, to April 2021. At the time, many fans and industry analysts viewed Universal's year-long delay as drastic and/or alarmist - but now it looks like the studio was being real when so many others were still naively hoping that the pandemic would come and go quickly. And yet, even Universal couldn't know just how long it would take for society to really open back up; F9 was forced to jump from April 2021 to Memorial Day, and then from Memorial Day to late June 2021, due to all the new surges in COVID-19 infections, as well as delays in getting the vaccine rolled out.

If the Korean box office is any indication, by late June US audiences should be ready to head out in droves to see F9. Korea's timeline of combating COVID saw much quicker success than in the US, and now their society seems to be truly back into full swing. Hopefully the same will be true domestically, this summer.

In terms of story: F9 will see John Cena enter the franchise as a pivotal figure (Dom's half-brother), working with the F&F team's new nemesis, Cypher (Charlize Theron). Get the full synopsis below:

After the events of The Fate of the Furious (2017), Dominic Toretto and his family must face Dominic's younger brother Jakob, a deadly assassin, who is working with their old enemy Cipher, and who holds a personal vendetta against Dominic.

F9 opens in US theaters on June 25th.