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| Furious 7 Movie Poster |
'Furious 7' the smash sequel earned more than $200M
It’s an odd thing to be discussing a 72.2% Friday-to-Friday drop as “good,” but such is the case with Furious 7. The smash sequel earned $18.8 million on its second Friday, down 71% from its whopping $67.4m Friday debut, which included $15.8m in Thursday previews. The film’s Friday-to-Friday drop was slightly higher than the 69% second Friday drop for Fast Five but slightly ahead of the 72.3% Friday drop for Fast & Furious 6 back in 2013. Random chance and all aside, the film’s second Friday was nearly double the $10m second Fridays of the last two installments, and the film soared over the $200m domestic mark on its eighth day, becoming on of fifteen films to do so in that many days or less. Its eight-day $210.7m cume puts it at number nine on said list. Its $18.8m Friday is the 14th biggest “second Friday” (day eight or day ten of wide release) in history, with almost all of the other higher figures coming from prime summer months or holiday-inflated late November/December slots.
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| Furious 7 |
Heck, only four higher “second wide release Fridays” didn’t come from Thanksgiving or Christmas weekend, specifically The Avengers ($29m), The Dark Knight ($23.3m), Spider-Man ($19.6m), and Iron Man 3 ($19.7m). And the respective percentage drops of most of those were indeed in the 65-70% range, meaning that Furious 7 didn’t just open like a top-tier blockbuster, it’s playing like a top-tier smash as well. At a glance (with The Hunger Games precedent for comparison), the Paul Walker/Vin Diesel adventure should end up with a second weekend of over/under $62m, which will put it awfully close to the top of the second-weekend pile. There are a few in the $62m range (The Dark Knight Rises, Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, and Alice In Wonderland) and American Sniper earned $64m on its second wide release weekend, so whether or not it ends up as the 12th biggest second weekend or as high as the eighth if it gets past American Sniper‘s $64.6m (unlikely but possible) is a matter of a few bucks here and there.
Either way, it is going to end its second weekend at around $254m domestic, surpassing the $236m domestic final of Fast & Furious to become the biggest grossing of the franchise even when adjusted for inflation. Heck, in ten days it’ll have grossed more than any 2014 release save American Sniper, The Hunger Games: Catching Fire, and Guardians of the Galaxy and will have the eighth-biggest ten day total of all time. At this rate, it will cross $300m next weekend and is going to make a real run at $400m, although falling a bit short is no defeat. For the record, its ten day total will probably be bigger than The Hunger Games ($248m) despite a slightly smaller opening weekend, and that first Katniss adventure snagged $409m by the time it was done. In terms of worldwide box office, it crossed $500m on Wednesday and should flirt with $700m worldwide by the end of tomorrow.
Yes, Avengers: Age of Ultron will start its global launch on April 22nd, but it won’t open in America until May 1st. At this point, the fact that the Avengers 2 review embargo is set to hold until after Furious 7‘s third weekend (April 21st at 2:00pm, although I may wait until the next morning to avoid the clutter) seems like a gift from Walt Disney to Universal/Comcast Corp., as it will allow Furious 7 to still dominate the conversation for another weekend. There isn’t much more to say until tomorrow when the weekend figures come in, but yes Furious 7 is indeed playing both fast and furious here and abroad. It is little wonder James Wan, who took over from Justin Lin and had to finish the film without his lead actor, is at the top of the Warner Bros./Time Warner Inc. wish-list for Aquaman. The film is set to run the tables for the next two weekends, which is of course the advantage of a late spring opening as opposed to a crowded summer slot. To paraphrase a certain classic Pixar quote, not every film can be a blockbuster, but blockbusters can come from anyway.
ref: forbes.com
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