Furious 7 held off Paul Blart 2 to come in first for the third weekend in a row, with a $29 million haul, falling 51% from last week. It's on its way to pass $300 million soon, while internationally it zoomed past the $1 billion mark in 17 days, the fastest movie to do so. While its domestic gross was relatively frontloaded, similar to the performance of the previous films, the overseas total is just astonishing. Seriously, what's the appeal? The fact that this franchise can break the record for fastest to $1 billion on its seventh time out, with no major movie stars in the cast, is mindblowing. People like watching cars explode and crash that much? This will forever remain a mystery to me.
Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 came in second this weekend, despite the hilariously awful reviews (it's sitting at 0% on Rotten Tomatoes, one of the few to hold that honor), and earned $24 million, just $7 million less than the first one's opening. Yeah, that's another one whose appeal is inexplicable. But it will disappear soon enough (that's not a movie that's going to earn a billion dollars worldwide). The other new release Unfriended, did relatively well with $16 million for third place, while Home and The Longest Ride rounded out the top five.
Top 5:
- Furious 7- $29.1 million
- Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2- $24 million
- Unfriended- $16 million
- Home- $10. 3 million
- The Longest Ride- $6.9 million
In limited release, the story continues to be Ex Machina, which brought in another impressive screen average of $20k (it opens wider next week), while the Disney nature documentary Monkey Kingdom, opened with $4.7 million. Just a couple more weeks to go until The Avengers explodes now, with Blake Lively's The Age of Adaline opening next week, alongside Russell Crowe's The Water Diviner (which already had a successful run in his home country of Australia). Until then!
