Furious 7 dropped 60% this week as expected, but still stayed on top for a strong first place finish, coming in with $60 million for a new total of $252 million, which coincidentally is already more than any other F&F movie ever earned here at home in its entire run. Overseas it's a different story entirely, as the movie has already ratcheted up more than $800 million globally- pretty astonishing, as you realize it's going to be up there with the Avengers and Star Wars movies by year's end. As always, I remain at a loss to explain the appeal of this franchise.
DreamWorks' Home held pretty well in its third week, falling just 30%, likely due to its being the most family-friendly of the recent releases in theaters, while the weekend's only new wide release, The Longest Ride, or Scott Eastwood's (son of Clint) bid for movie stardom, opened in third with $13.5 million, on the lower end of Nicholas Sparks adaptations. Get Hard and Cnderella rounded out the top five, but expect both to fall out of that group when Paul Blart 2 opens next week (yeah, that's another inexplicable family audience hit that I will never, ever catch up with).
Top 5:
- Furious 7- $60.6 million
- Home- $19 million
- The Longest Ride- $13.5 million
- Get Hard- $8.6 million
- Cinderella- $7.2 million
In limited release this week, the sci-fi flick Ex Machina had the biggest bow of the year so far, opening on just 4 screens to $250k, or a $62k per theater average. While We're Young continues to hold nicely as it expands, and both that and Ex Machina are the two specialty releases to have success at the box office so far this year, while Clouds of Sils Maria (a movie from last year's Cannes film festival starring Juliette Binoche and Kristen Stewart) had a much smaller debut, opening with just $70k on three screens. Next week, like I said, it's the long awaited (?) Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, and the horror movie Unfriended- both will probably be terrible, as we wait for the Avengers earthquake to shake things up on May 1st. Until then everyone!
