Fast & Furious 6 caps record-breaking box office haul

Fast & Furious 6, the street-racing franchise, is wooing the North American box office big, even as it delivers a turbo-charged performance overseas.

The multi-starrer debuted atop the holiday weekend box office and grossed an estimated $120 million from Friday till Monday, making it the second-biggest film opening of 2013 behind Disney's Iron Man 3 ($175.3) million earlier this month.

Fast & Furious 6 has now also become the biggest opener in Universal Pictures' history.

The film also rang up an estimated $300 million at the global box office.

Fast & Furious 6 stars Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, Michelle Rodriguez and Dwayne Johnson, along with an international supporting cast. The film follows the muscle-car crew as they join with police in a worldwide hunt for a terrorist.

Universal Pictures, a unit of Comcast Corp, said Fast & Furious 6 outperformed its predecessor in the series - Fast Five - which previously held the title of best opening for the studio with $83.6 million at domestic theaters.

Fast & Furious 6 also raced ahead of The Hangover Part III, the final installment of the comedy about four men trying to piece together the events of a wild night.

The raunchy comedy, starring Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis and Ed Helms as friends unwittingly drawn back to Las Vegas, made an estimated $51.2 million at the US and Canada box office over the long weekend.

Though a proven box-office winner, with its six films cumulatively collecting $1.9 billion so far, the Fast & Furious series hasn't quite reached the level of other powerhouse action franchises such as Harry Potter, Transformers and Iron Man.

The five Potter films have earned $7.7 billion worldwide. The three Transformers films have a worldwide gross of $2.67 billion. The third Iron Man film was released last month, and the franchise has claimed $2.36 billion worldwide so far.

With inputs from agencies