‘The Fate Of The Furious’ Trailer Breaks Global Records For First 24 Hours

EXCLUSIVE: Talk about dropping a trailer into fifth gear. Universal’s Sunday launch of The Fate of the Furious trailer became the largest debut ever, setting a global record with 139M views in its first 24 hours and zooming past the 127.6M first-day views recently posted by Disney’s Beauty and the Beast.

A perfect storm of events fueled the trailer drop for the eighth Fast & Furious title and drove it to great heights.

First, Uni debuted the trailer in a historic Times Square takeover with the franchise’s castmembers Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Tyrese Gibson, Chris “Ludacris” Bridges, Michelle Rodriguez, Nathalie Emmanuel and director F. Gary Gray participating. The Fate of the Furious trailer took over 33 digital billboards in the Manhattan landmark, all of which simultaneously played the spot with its debut on TV and online. The Big Kahuna billboard, which is the largest digital screen in the US at 30K square feet, was among the screens playing the trailer.

The Facebook livestream, which preceded the trailer drop and the broadcast premiere on NBC, drew 4M-plus views to date.

Uni also aired the broadcast trailer during NBC’s Football Night in America pre-show that immediately preceded the New York Giants-Dallas Cowboys Sunday Night Football game. Not a bad place to be: That sporting event turned out to be the most-watched primetime NFL game of the season with 26.7M viewers.

Currently, via YouTube and Facebook, The Fate of the Furious trailer counts north of 38.8M views in North America and 49.5M-plus abroad. Third-party sources accounted for 18.5M views, with talent social accounting for 32M views. Between Diesel and Johnson, the duo count 270M-plus followers across their social channels (FB, Twitter, Instagram).

For Hispanic audiences, Uni worked with sister company Telemundo to develop a bespoke five-minute broadcast featuring a Spanish version of the trailer and an in-language interview with Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez that aired as a lead-in to Don Francisco Te Invita later that evening.

On Friday, fans were treated to a 15-second tease and the announcement of the film’s title, which resulted in multiple trends within moments of its debut.

The Fate of the Furious hits theaters on April 14. Through seven titles, the Fast & Furious franchise has racked up $3.9B at the global B.O. The previous installment, Furious 7, was the first in the series to cross the billion mark with $1.5B worldwide and also posted the fifth highest global opening with $397.7M.