Weekend Wrap-Up: Seven Does Furious Business

April 7, 2015

Furious 7 poster

As expected, Furious 7 easily won the race for top spot on the weekend box office chart. However, it did so in an unexpectedly robust way, destroying a number of records along the way. This helped the overall box office grow 49% from last weekend to $224 million. More importantly, the overall box office was 34% more than the same weekend last year. Year-to-date, 2015 is now 3.1% above 2014's pace at $2.64 billion to $2.56 billion. Assuming Furious 7 has any legs at all, this lead will continue to grow next weekend.

Furious 7 became the biggest hit of the year opening with $147.16 million during its opening weekend. There's no need to go over all of the records is broke, again, but the studio did release some very interesting demographic numbers. Firstly, the audience was split right down the middle with 50% male and 50% female audience members. Secondly, the ethnic breakdown was very diverse, with Hispanics leading with 37%, while Caucasians and African-Americans nearly tied for second place with 25% and 24% respectively. This result could cause a titanic shift in the thinking of studio heads. Make movies with ethnically diverse casts and multiple strong female characters, and more people will be interested in seeing your movies. As for the film's legs, the Fast and the Furious franchise is known for fast starts, but rather quick declines, while its reviews are among the best for any wide release that has come out this year. The film should top $300 million with relative ease, while its worldwide numbers could come close to $1 billion. That will be interesting to watch.

Despite the holiday weekend, Home fell 48% to $27.01 million over the weekend for a total of $95.24 million. Granted, a fall of less than 50% during a film's sophomore stint isn't bad, but family films usually perform better than the average release. Clearly the reviews weren't a major selling point. That said, the film is very close to topping $100 million and it will blow past its $130 million production budget in a week or so.

Get Hard fell just over 60% to $13.13 million over the weekend for a ten-day total of $57.22 million. At this pace, it should reach $80 million, more or less. This will be enough to be considered a solid midlevel hit and will keep the studio happy.

Cinderella came within a rounding error of expectations, but was on the north end helping it earn fourth place with $10.18 million over the weekend for a total of $167.14 million after four weeks of release. It might have made enough domestically to cover its entire production budget, while it is performing even better internationally, so the film will earn a significant profit before it reaches the home market.

Insurgent rounded out the top five with $10.13 million, while its running tally rose to $103.51 million. By this time next week, it will have matched its $110 million production budget, so the studio should be satisfied with that result.

Woman in Gold opened in sixth place with $2.09 million over the weekend for a total opening of $2.19 million. The film was only playing in 258 screens, giving it a per theater average of $8,107. This suggests it has some potential to expand, but it won't expand wide.

Looking in on the sophomore class, It Follows fell 34% to $2.51 million during its second week of semi-wide release. So far, the film has pulled in $8.42 million, making it the second biggest limited release of the year, behind Still Alice, although that film did have an Oscar-qualifying run in 2014, so perhaps it shouldn't count.


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Filed under: Weekend Wrap-up, Home, Furious 7, Cinderella, The Divergent Series: Insurgent, Get Hard, It Follows, Still Alice, Woman in Gold, Fast and the Furious