Weekend Box Office: Still With All the Fury

Surprising no one, the latest ‘Fast and Furious’ installment continued to dominate the box office yet again this weekend. More importantly, it kept a terrible comedy and a gimmicky horror flick from the top spot.

It took less than 17 days for ‘Furious 7‘ to cross the $1 billion worldwide threshold. The sequel grossed another $29 million domestically in its third week, but the big story comes out of China. Eight days at Chinese cinemas resulted in $250 million. The movie currently sits in the seventh all-time highest-grossing spot, and will definitely continue moving up the ranks.

Considering that the first ‘Paul Blart’ movie debuted to $31.8 million and bowed with $146.3 million, the $24 million opening for ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2′‘ wasn’t anything special. With lousy reviews and poor word-of-mouth, the belated sequel isn’t expected to do more than $70 million.

The seemingly single-take horror movie ‘Unfriended‘ premiered with $16 million, which isn’t too shabby considering the movie’s $1 million micro budget. That’s the best horror opening since summer 2013’s ‘The Conjuring’. The film will likely reach $40 million before exiting theaters.

Four-week-old ‘Home‘ fell into fourth place with another $10.3 million, which brings its domestic run up to $142.6 million. That isn’t great for an animated kids’ flick, but it’s almost exactly where ‘The Croods’ was at during the same part of its run in 2013.

In its second week, Nicholas Sparks’ ‘The Longest Ride‘ slipped from third place to fifth. After dropping 47% in attendance (which is much better than the decline of most Sparks movies), it earned $6.8 million and sits with a ten-day total of $23.5 million.

DisneyNature’s Earth Day releases aren’t doing as well as they used to. ‘Monkey Kingdom‘ suffered the studio’s worst debut to date. From more than 2,000 screens, the primate nature documentary only scored $4.7 million.

James Franco and Jonah Hill’s Sundance drama ‘True Story‘ didn’t fare too well either. From 831 locations (which is high enough to give it “wide” status), the film only pulled in $1.9 million. The $2,323 per-screen average shows how little business it did.

Tom Hardy’s Soviet-era drama ‘Child 44‘ had an awful 510-screen opening. With only $600,000 and a per-screen average of $1,176, don’t expect Lionsgate to ever expand this release.

Top 10:

1. ‘Furious 7’ (Universal) – $29,056,000

2. ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2’ (Sony) – $24,000,000

3. ‘Unfriended’ (Universal) – $16,023,000

4. ‘Home’ (Fox) – $10,300,000

5. ‘The Longest Ride’ (Fox) – $6,850,000

6. ‘Get Hard’ (Warner Bros.) – $4,830,000

7. ‘Monkey Kingdom’ (Buena Vista) – $4,715,000

8. ‘Woman in Gold’ (Weinstein) – $4,587,000

9. ‘Insurgent’ (Lionsgate) – $4,150,000

10. ‘Cinderella’ (Buena Vista) – $3,871,000

1 comment

  1. cardpetree

    Last time I checked, Paul Blart was 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. I’d be completely surprised if the movie was anything other than horrible so I’m guessing the Paul Blart people are ecstatic with a $24 mil opening weekend.

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