That figure shot up to 38% for the followup “2 Fast 2 Furious.” As much as 24% of the audience was Latino. Two years later, the first in the franchise, “The Fast and the Furious,” was released. In 1999, the studio quickly realized that some of the box office success of “The Mummy” was due to a strong Hispanic turnout. Other studios have found similar success with a diverse group of pictures, including Disney’s “Beverly Hills Chihuahua,”20th Century Fox’s “Alvin and the Chipmunks,” Paramount’s “Transformers,” Lionsgate’s Jackie Chan-Jet Li fantasy actioner “The Forbidden Kingdom” and U’s “The Incredible Hulk.” Stars Vin Diesel and Michelle Rodriguez traveled to Miami and Mexico to do promotion.
It also used extensive outdoor campaigns in Latino neighborhoods (in both languages), and even separate press junkets for Spanish-language media. World Cup match last winter featured Spanish-language TV trailers on Univision and Telemundo and used Spanish-lingo social-networking Websites. U ran advertisements during a Mexico-U.S. “Fast” was just the latest Hollywood film to tailor marketing to that audience. But they’ve found amazing success not by offering material geared to Hispanic auds, but by catering their marketing of “mainstream” films to them.
While distribs have tried to woo Hispanic movie audiences with Spanish-language fare, the results have been unimpressive. census says Hispanics comprise 15% of the population, the group made up a whopping 46% of the “Fast”aud, according to exit polling data conducted by the studio. The surprisingly strong opening of Universal’s “Fast and Furious” - $71 million over the April 3-5 weekend - was Hollywood’s latest reminder of the power of Hispanic moviegoers. ‘Fast & Furious’ taps into hispanic movie audiences