Fast X will barely make a profit despite its huge $704 million gross at box office

The Fast & Furious franchise has gone from strength to strength at the box office.

The latest offering from Vin Diesel and friends has so far pulled in an eye-watering haul of $704 million.

These earnings places it as the fourth highest grossing film of the year so far.

So a cause for celebration for the studio, right?

Not quite.

Despite making three quarters of a billion dollars, the movie will not make a significant profit because of its $340m budget.

While it'll still make a modest profit, it won't reach the heights of the franchise's biggest earner, Furious 7, which hit cinemas in 2015 and made a profit of over $1.5bn.

This will no doubt be disappointing for Universal Pictures, but Fast X isn't the only blockbuster flick that is struggling.

High budgeted titles from big franchises like Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning part One, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, and The Flash are all expected to lose money.

Universal Pictures

The fifth Indiana Jones film grossed only $375m globally, while the seventh Mission Impossible movie earned $523m.

These certainly aren't numbers to dismiss outright, but with films becoming more and more expensive, box office profits need to be higher.

Only three movies are currently edging out Fast X for the title of highest grossing film of 2023 - The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Barbie and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3.

The success of Barbie has left some questioning whether or not big blockbusters are in trouble.

At a relatively cheaper budget of an estimated $150m, the Greta Gerwig film has already made over $1 billion at the worldwide box office.

Whether or not that studios will take this as a cue to cut back on expensive action franchises remains to be seen.

Universal Pictures

But with two more Fast and Furious films set to come out in the coming years, and Tom Cruise showing no signs of slowing down, I'm not betting on it.

Shawn Robbins, chief analyst at Boxoffice Pro, said: "These movies would have been a lot more economical if it weren’t for COVID.

"But even if that meant their budgets were inflated, at the end of the day, these movies cost what they cost and performed how they performed."

And things could be looking worse for Hollywood in 2024, with dual labor strikes meaning that release delays could be on the way.