- Box Office
World Box Office, April 10 – 16, 2017
The Fate of the Furious put the pedal to the metal and burned rubber on six continents with a record breaking $532 million global debut. With $433.2 million overseas and $100.1 million at home, the Universal Pictures’ official goodbye to their nearly two decade long street racing/action saga clocked the biggest worldwide launch of any film in history. It left Jurassic World’s $316 million super launch at the starting line and finished its first lap inches ahead of Star Wars: The Force Awakens’ $529 million opening last December. F. Gary Gray’s over-the-top conclusion to this eight part series took Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Michelle Rodriguez, Ludacris and the rest of their crime fighting racing crew on an adventure with stops in Cuba, Iceland, Berlin, Moscow and New York. Hijinks include a fleet of super cars fitted with spiked tires battling a Russian nuclear sub on an ice field above the Arctic Circle and a heart stopping muscle car race through the streets of Havana, where the Universal picture was the first American film to shoot without a foreign coproduction since the 1960 embargo. Dominic Toretto, Vin Diesel’s long running series lead, is coerced into working for cyber terrorist Cipher (Charlize Theron) after she takes his wife and son hostage. She sends him to New York to steal a nuclear football from a Russian diplomat as part of her bid for global domination. Dom soon finds himself battling former ally Luke Hobbs (The Rock) and Fast 7 Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) after they’re both enlisted by American authorities to stop him.
The Fate of the Furious made the dragon’s share of it’s foreign gross in China where it had an immense $192.1 million three day opening, the biggest of all time for a Hollywood film. Other standout territories were Mexico at $17.7 million, the UK and Ireland at $17.5 million, Russia on $14.2 million and Germany on $13.6 million. Fate will have a clear slate ahead of it for the next two weeks before Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 opens overseas on April 25.
While the rest of the filed barely got out of the gates, The Boss Baby was able to keep a bit of momentum going with a $15.5 million second place weekend at home. It added $52 million overseas as well taking its global push to $287.3 million after three weeks in theatres.
Disney may have jumped out of the spotlight for the time being but its massive fairytale Beauty and the Beast still casts an exceptionally long shadow. Belle and company added $35.6 million this weekend, deepening their run past the billion-dollar threshold. In the US and Canada plays were worth $13.6 million while foreign sales netted $22 million, taking the property’s total earnings to $1.043 billion in just over a month in theatres.
Smurfs: The Lost Village meanwhile reached $95 million worldwide with Chinese and Korean openings still on the horizon and Ghost in the Shell made it to $152.1 million.
Next weekend we’ll see how much speed The Fate of the Furious can carry into its second lap, and take a look at how animated feature Spark: A Space Trail and old school adventure film The Lost City of Z manage to jump into this treacherous box office grand prix.