Will Hobbs & Shaw break the summer’s franchise slump?

It’s been a rough year for franchises. While the Marvel Cinematic Universe broke box office records with Avengers: Endgame and enjoyed other successes with Captain Marvel and Spider-Man: Far From Home, films outside of the MCU have struggled to maintain interest and momentum in their sequels and reboots. Godzilla: King of the Monsters, Men in Black: International and Dark Phoenix were critical and box office disappointments, earning less than hoped and being criticised for failing to find a new and exciting angle of the material.

Directed by Deadpool 2’s David Leitch, the first Fast & Furious spin-off sees hulking lawman Hobbs (Johnson), a loyal agent of America's Diplomatic Security Service, and lawless outcast Shaw (Statham), a former British military elite operative, reunite after first facing off in first 2015’s Furious 7. Since then, the duo have swapped smack talk and body blows as they’ve tried to take each other down. But when cyber-genetically enhanced anarchist Brixton (Idris Elba) gains control of an insidious bio-threat that could alter humanity forever — and bests a brilliant and fearless rogue MI6 agent (The Crown’s Vanessa Kirby), who just happens to be Shaw’s sister — these two sworn enemies will have to partner up to bring down the only guy who might be badder than themselves.

Initial box office tracking is predicting that the film should earn between $60-$65 million on its opening weekend end in the States, and go on to earn $175 million worldwide. Thanks to some nice word-of-mouth-friendly touches in the film, such as some surprise cameos, the film could maintain a nice audience over its second weekend, too.

This will rank as a relatively low box office return for the opening weekend of a Fast & Furious film, though as the franchise’s first stand-alone film, direct comparisons will always be somewhat unfair. The biggest debut for the series belongs to Furious 7 which earned $147 million during its opening weekend in 2015, and went on to become the highest-grossing instalment yet with a mighty $1.5 billion. The most recent instalment, 2017’s The Fate of the Furious raced into cinemas with $98 million and ended its box office run with $1.2 billion. Frankly, even being an underperforming instalment in a franchise making that kind of money is pretty good.

Pre-sales in the United States indicate that the combination of the franchise’s popularity and the combination of Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham are serving the film – and its stars - well. Hobbs & Shaw is outstripping the advance ticket sales for other Dwayne Johnson pics including Skyscraper, Rampage and The Fate of the Furious.

Does Hobbs & Shaw deserve the anticipation? You’ll just have to race to the cinema on August 1 and find out for yourself.