• Box Office

World Box Office, April 17 – 23, 2017

The Fate of the Furious hardly slowed down for its second lap around the planet, taking an extra $202 million in its second weekend. For the whole week, Monday through Sunday, that figure jumps to $476 million and brings this film’s global haul to $908 million dollars in just eleven days. It should zoom past $1 billion by Wednesday at the latest. FF probably won’t be the fastest movie of all time to break into the billions, but it’ll come close. Current nine-figure speed king Star Wars: The Force Awakens pulled off its run in twelve days, but it had a Christmas and New Year boost on its side. Last month’s megahit and weeks long headline hog Beauty and the Beast took a full 29 days to its biggest milestone for comparison.

So far seven hundred and fifty of those nine hundred odd millions have come from foreign territories. Nearly half of that figure came from China alone, where Universal’s unstoppable tour to their highest earning series of all time just hit $318.9 million. It’s now the third highest earning foreign film of all time in the Middle Kingdom; just behind Transformers: Age of Extinction’s $320 million (which it could pass by the time this article hits the press), and closing in on its younger sibling Furious 7’s record $390 million. The rest of its biggest markets are Mexico and the UK at $29.9 and $29.3 million, Brazil and Germany at $26.2 and $24.4 million, Russia at $23.4 million and a surprising $19.2 million in India. If it can keep up its current pace, FF will zoom past a billion and a half, but its relatively tame sales in North America may keep it from reaching the two billion dollar mark.

A $36.8 million weekend and a home market cume of $163.5 million isn’t something to shake a stick at, but just like last summer’s Furious 7 this movie’s skewing heavily towards overseas plays and probably won’t find that extra gear to slip into the all time top three because of it. For now, Fate of the Furious held off several new challengers and easily took first at its second round of the American circuit. Disney Nature’s Born in China, which stars two wild pandas, finished at the head of this ill fated pack with a $5 million opening, followed by Warner Brothers’ erotic thriller Unforgettable, starring Katherine Heigl and Rosario Dawson at $4.8 million.

Next was Terry George’s The Promise, a controversial drama about the Armenian genocide funded by Armenian-American businessman Kirk Kerkorian and starring Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac. $4 million dollars might be one of the lowest marginal returns ever for a $100 million picture, but it seems that this film wasn’t ever really intended to turn a profit as much as bring attention to a dark chapter in Turkish history and to help remember the estimated 1.5 million victims of this genocide.

Next week’s major entries will be tech thriller The Circle, starring Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, and the comedy How to be a Latin Lover starring Salma Hayek and Rob Lowe.

See the latest world box office estimates: