Box Office: Furious 7 Keeps Moving, Now At $1.3 Billion; Avengers: Age Of Ultron With $201.2 Million Overseas

Box Office, Columns, News, Top Story

The weekend was pretty uneventful at the domestic box office. There were some historic notes, particularly for Universal’s Furious 7. Once again, the seventh installment in the F&F franchise held the number #1 spot for the fourth week in a row. The lone new major release, The Age of Adeline, did not make for a formidable adversary as it was unable to put up much competition against Vin Diesel and his “family.” Furious 7 finished with an estimated $18.2 million, helping to push the worldwide figure to a staggering $1.32 billion. The seventh ‘Furious’ film is now in the fifth position as the highest grossing film of all time, knocking Disney’s Frozen to sixth. By the end of this week it should have supplanted the final Harry Potter film to take #4 all time. And it’s only a matter of time before it knocks off Marvel’s The Avengers to become the third highest grossing film of all time, where it will stay as there’s no way it will knock off Titanic or Avatar, which are both over $2 billion worldwide.

Domestically, it sits at 36th all time but should jump up to the 28th spot before too long as it passes 2014’s top release American Sniper.

Outside of Furious 7’s performance the only big story is the performance of The Avengers: Age of Ultron. Set to open in the States on May 1st (or April 30th if you go by prime-time openings), the film opened in forty-four markets abroad and grossed $201.2 million internationally. This doesn’t include territories like China or Japan, mind you. Pencil in at least $150-$160 million for its opening weekend domestic bow.  As for the already mentioned Age of Adeline, Lionsgate dropped it in almost 3,000 screens but it could only entice $13.3 million from viewers. That was enough to have it open in third, behind Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, which achieved $15.5 million in its second week despite an aggregate score of 0% on Rotten Tomatoes. Let’s give it up to America, folks. Making more bad movie-going decisions, which does nothing to combat the continual misusing of Kevin James in comedies.
One of my favorite films so far this year, A24’s Ex Machina, expanded by 1,255 screens and saw its per-screen average jump 581.3% as a result. With strong critics acclaim, the intelligent sci-fi thriller made $5.4 million in its third weekend. If it continues a steady stream of expansion with expected drops in weekend-to-weekend attendance it could become A24’s highest grossing film in the U.S. (Spring Breakers holds that record for now with $13 million).

In other news, Matthew Vaughn’s Kingsman: The Secret Service is just a few $100k away from eclipsing $400 million worldwide. For those who care, Fifty Shades of Grey has a huge disparity in attendance as most of its earnings (70%) have come from overseas. Guess foreigners love kinky love stories more than us Americans. And this misfire that was Child 44 starring Tom Hardy and Gary Oldman dropped like a stone in its second weekend as its earnings dropped 69.4% at 510 locations and its per-screen average was a measly $373 – the worst of any film at the box office.

This upcoming weekend it is all about Marvel’s The Avengers: Age of Ultron, which will dominate the marketplace and become your new #1. I don’t think it will match or eclipse the $207,438,708 of the original’s 2012 release, but we shall see once the estimates drop on Sunday.

Full Top 10 below.

01. Furious 7 — $18,259,000 ($320,536,000)
02. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 — $15,500,000 ($43,950,000)
03. The Age of Adaline — 13,375,000
04. Home — $8,300,000 ($153,784,000)
05. Unfriended — $6,244,000 ($25,158,000)
06. Ex Machina — $5,441,000 ($6,920,000)
07. The Longest Ride — $4,365,000 ($30,398,000)
08. Get Hard — $3,905,000 ($84,066,000)
09. Monkey Kingdom — $3,551,000 ($10,258,000)
10. Woman in Gold — $3,501,000 ($21,635,000)

Travis Leamons is one of the Inside Pulse Originals and currently holds the position of Managing Editor at Inside Pulse Movies. He's told that the position is his until he's dead or if "The Boss" can find somebody better. I expect the best and I give the best. Here's the beer. Here's the entertainment. Now have fun. That's an order!