The Fast & Furious 6 Profit Machine

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published May 28, 6:46AM EDT

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“Fast & Furious 6” brought in $122.2 million in North America over the Memorial Day weekend — a record for the period. Adding overseas, the figure was $366 million. The movie may have cost $150 million to make, so it is already profitable. And one of its competitors for the first place crown — “Hangover III” — likely has not. Sequels are not created equal. But “Fast & Furious 6” begs the question whether action films trump comedies based on heavy drinkers and frat humor.

Most evidence would suggest that the action genre has as advantage. The other blockbuster film of the spring is “Iron Man 3.” Behind that is a more modest hit — “Star Trek into Darkness.” The Star Trek franchise goes back to the 1960s TV show and Iron Man back to 1963. All three of the movies are sequels of sequels of sequels. But so was “Hangover III”, which leaves the only obvious advantage, again, of action over comedy.

The other piece of evidence for action over all other categories is historic. “Marvel’s The Avengers” is near the top of the all-time box office sales chart. So are films from the Batman, Mission: Impossible, Spider Man, Star Wars and movie elder statesman James Bond franchises.

There are odd alternative movies well up on the list: “Avatar,” “Titanic” Harry Potter films and “The Passion of the Christ.” Harry Potter had a genesis in books. The others stand out as one-offs. Every rule has to have exceptions. Or, as scientists say, an outlier. Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ” likely is the most extreme case of a radical exception.

A look over which moves work and which do not prompts the question why any studio would make anything other than an action movie sequel, ever. Perhaps so that high-paid movie executives can keep their jobs.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.