The traditional summer blockbuster season is still months away and yet thanks to Furious 7’s smoldering launch we already have the first billion-dollar movie of 2015. The pinnacle of a franchise that in fourteen years has known nothing but success, 7 scored its third straight win run at the U.S. box office, closing out the frame with a $29 million domestic tally. Furious 7’s total domestic gross now sits at $294.4 million which, if we count American Sniper as a 2014 movie based on its limited theatrical release at the end of December, makes this weekend’s champ the highest grossing film of 2015 in North America. Foreign numbers were doubly impressive. Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez, the late Paul Walker and the rest of Furious’ breakneck crew kept their engines screaming over the redline around the world with a $167.9 million weekend in 67 foreign territories. China proved to be by far the most lucrative of these with a $93.3 million Thursday-Sunday take. Total earnings there have reached a staggering $250.5 million in just eight days.
With Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron holding off on its Chinese release until May 15, Furious 7 stands a good chance of overtaking Transformers: Age of Extinction’s $301 million record for an American film in the middle kingdom. In Japan, which played host to the series’ third installment, Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift, it finished second with $5.9 million after losing the top spot to local animated production Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ . Other notable cumes include the UK with $49.6 million, Mexico with $45.6 million, and Brazil, which was the setting for Fast 5, with $32.4 million. All together, Furious 7’s overseas income to date is a massive $858.3 million. Its domestic and international cumulative reached $1.15 billion, making Universal’s biggest film ever the 7th highest grossing movie of all time. Back on the domestic front, lowbrow family friendly comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: Blart Harder made its way into theatres with a $24 million debut. Considering its $30 million budget and the competition this weekend, this is a decent result. The original made a surprising $186 million globally and while this one will likely fizzle out at home, it may still make some strides abroad in the coming weeks.
Domestic bronze went to yet another Blumhouse profit machine, Unfriended. This unlikely and innovative thriller from Georgian director Levan Gabriadze plays out entirely over computer screens via Skype and Facebook conversations and follows a mysterious hacker’s plot for revenge on a gang of cyber bullies that led a teenage girl to commit suicide. It
earned a rather impressive $16 million from a predictably miniscule $1 million budget. Universal is handling distribution, and will move this picture into select foreign markets in the coming week.
Home, from Fox and DreamWorks, enjoyed another decent run at the domestic box office. Its three day cumulative, in the film’s fourth week in North American theaters, came out to $10.3 million after a 44% drop from last frame. It had a nearly identical showing abroad where it earned $10.4 million from 64 territories, reaching an overseas total of $129 million. A combined global cumulative of $271 million is by no means a negative result, but it does place this picture behind recent DreamWorks animation hits like How to Train Your Dragon 2 and Penguins of Madagascar.
The Indian box office found a winner in Fox International’s Mr. X, starring Emraan Hasmi and Amyra Datsur. It earned $3.2 million playing on 2,147 screens where films can be seen for as little as ninety-three cents. In Japan, local hit Dragon Ball Z: Resurrection ‘F’ topped the charts with an $8.2 million debut.
Next week will of course be focused on the undoubtedly gargantuan opening of Avengers: Age of Ultron. WWII drama Little Boy will also bravely make its debut along with Blake Lively led The Age of Adaline.
Lorenzo Soria