Justin Lin’s F9 took a brutal tumble in China but essentially held up in its other hold-over markets. The film earned $20.76 million in China this weekend, a drop of 85% from last weekend’s $136 million launch. However, the Vin Diesel/John Cena film’s sharp decline in China has little-to-nothing to do with the controversy concerning Cena walking back the offhand declaration of Taiwan being a country. Fate of the Furious, which Chinese audiences liked more than F9, dropped 70% from its $185 million debut in early 2017 while Hobbs & Shaw dropped 72% in 2019. China is generally a market, in terms of Hollywood biggies, where the films earn around 2x or 2.25x their respective opening weekends.

That’s because, generally speaking, there are more Hollywood movies available than the early 2010s, there are far more screens in which to meet the immediate demand and there are a lot more Chinese biggies offering local competition. China is perfectly capable of showing up to a Hollywood biggie and then thrusting their thumbs downward if they don’t like the movie. Warcraft was even more frontloaded ($220 million from a $90 million Wed-Thurs and $156 million Wed-Sun debut) in China than it was in North America. Moreover, China is capable of showing up for Terminator: Genysis, holding their nose as they exit the theater and staying home for Terminator: Dark Fate.

For that matter, Detective Chinatown 3 broke records for a single-territory debut with $398.5 million but sank like a stone because audiences just didn’t like it as much as the first two installments. Sure, it still earned $685 million, but A) it had a miserable 1.7x multiplier and B) was quickly passed by another New Years’ week opener, Hi Mom which legged out to $825 million. While the John Cena controversy certainly didn’t help, it didn’t do much to hurt in terms of already-visible patterns of box office descent. To quote my favorite deleted scene in Sarah Polley’s modern classic Away From Her: Life is… complicated.

F9 has still earned $185 million in China and will pass Godzilla Vs. Kong ($188 million) in a day or two. Once that happens, it’ll be the second-biggest non-MCU Hollywood flick in China since Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom ($267 million) in summer 2018 behind only… Hobbs & Shaw ($200 million in summer 2019). If F9 gets past $201 million (past Spider-Man: Far from Home), it’ll be the second-biggest Hollywood movie behind Avengers: Endgame ($620 million) since the aforementioned Jurassic World sequel. It’s still a disappointment in China, but the difference between $200 million and $393 million (what Fate of the Furious earned) is around $48 million for Universal.

This just puts additional pressure for non-Chinese territories. And good news there, because it held up pretty much on par with Fate of the Furious in its other overseas territories. It dropped 42% in South Korea (-35% for Fate of the Furious), 59% in Russia (-62% for F8), 62% in the U.A.E. (-56% for F8), 34% in Egypt (-54% for F8) and 60% in Hong Kong (-61% for F8). Now some of those territories are dealing with lower grosses. Egypt is down around 50% from Fate of the Furious while F9’s $13.34 million end-of-second-weekend total is way below F8 ($23 million) and even Hobbs & Shaw ($19 million).

However, nobody was expecting anything close to the $1.236 billion cume of Fate of the Furious and even a cume nearing Hobbs & Shaw ($760 million) would be a relative win under these complicated circumstances. Hell, a 1/3 drop from F8 to F9 would still be on par with Hi, Mom’s $825 million cume, and that may be the best-case-scenario at least until we see how well it performs in the next wave of openings. It’ll open in Australia on June 17 and then Brazil, Mexico, the United Kingdom, Ireland and North America on the week of June 25. It’ll open in Spain on July 2, France and Germany on the week of July 16 and Japan on August 6. Last up is Italy on August 18.

We should have a good idea by July 4 weekend whether F9 is fast and/or furious or lost in rock-n-roll (and thus drifting away). That said, like the James Bond series (whose Spectre earned $880 million worldwide in 2015 despite being the worst 007 movie since A View to A Kill), The Fast Saga is perfectly capable to course-correcting (if needed) for Fast 10 and Fast 11 as the series enters its final lap. Even if it can’t depend on China for a massive global advantage (and it’s entirely possible that Fast 10 will play differently as audiences clearly went into F9 from a place of optimism), Fate of the Furious would have still earned $843 million without a penny from China.