‘Furious 7′ Dominates Box Office With $60.6 Million Weekend
Furious 7 dominated its competition this past weekend at the box office and with it, secured its second weekend on top of the standings.
It racked up $60.6 million which took its U.S. total to a massive $252.5 million. As impressive as its weekend numbers were, that’s a 59 percent drop from the record-breaking $147.2 million debut last week, but it does put Furious 7 on track to be the highest-grossing film in the history of the Fast and Furious franchise.
A lot of its success can be down to Universal Pictures releasing the movie when they did. With it debuting in April, Furious 7 avoided being drowned out by other major releases that are upcoming, and allowed the movie to drive home big profits against a fairly weak slate of movies currently in release. The next major release is Marvel’s Avengers: Age of Ultron, which doesn’t hit screens until May 1st in the United States, but is released in Europe a week earlier. This will be an interesting time for Furious 7 as it is expected to drop significantly with Europe audiences as they flock to see Age of Ultron.
DreamWorks Animation’s Home continued to draw in families, landing in second place with $19 million. So far the animated movie has earned $129.6 million in its three weeks of release.
The Longest Ride, directed by Nicolas Sparks, debuted to $13.5 million, meeting Fox’s projections. Critics were pretty harsh with this movie, as they usually are with Sparks’ work, but audiences seemed to enjoy the romantic drama, which showed in its final weekend numbers for the limited release.
Comedy flick Get Hard picked up $8.6 million in its third weekend of release to take fourth place, taking its total to $71.2 million for Warner Bros. The live-action retelling of Disney’s Cinderella completed the top five, earning $7.2 million, which pushed its domestic total to $180.8 million.
