F9 is the sequel to The Fate of the Furious (2017), the ninth main installment, and the tenth full-length film released overall in the Fast & Furious franchise. It stars Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, John Cena, Jordana Brewster, Nathalie Emmanuel, Sung Kang, Helen Mirren, and Charlize Theron. F9 lead star Vin Diesel is also well known to Indian audiences, having appeared alongside Deepika Padukone in her Hollywood debut xXx: Return of Xander Cage in 2017. F9 was released in overseas markets this week with estimated opening weekend collections of $160-180 million, is still a some days away from its India debut. Most cinemas across the country remain shut and the film is eyeing a late June release for now, dubbed in Hindi, Tamil and Telugu along with the original.
India has a special connection with the Fast and Furious franchise. The seventh instalment released in 2015 was the first Hollywood film to cross the Rs100 crore mark at the Indian box office. By grossing nearly Rs150 crore in the country, industry experts have often said, the film was pretty much responsible for initiating the surge that Hollywood has seen in the country over the past five years. The older film had released across 2,800 screens and netted Rs69.65 crore in the first week.
Going against the norm, distributors Universal Pictures had chosen not to restrict the screening of the film to DCI (Digital Cinema Initiatives)-compliant theatres and had become the first major Hollywood studio to take their film to non-DCI theatres too. DCI is a joint venture of several film studios, including Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Paramount Pictures, Sony Pictures Entertainment, 20th Century Fox, Universal Studios, The Walt Disney Company and Warner Bros, to set up a common set of requirements that ensure a high and uniform standard of digital cinema viewing.
