Monday, April 20, 2015

Weekend Box Office Report: ‘Furious 7’ Outpaces ‘Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2’


For the third week in a row, Furious 7 took the top spot at the box office and made it look easy. Not even a trio of newcomers could slow down the latest entry in the crowd-pleasing action series, which has become the fastest film to reach $1 billion worldwide. For the domestic box office, it’s equally impressive. It’s a juggernaut; a cultural event. At the end of the day, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 may make some money, but it’s making that money in the shadow of a genuine phenomenon.



FilmWeekend Per Screen
1Furious 7$29,056,000 (-51.2)$7,330$294,410,000
2Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2$24,000,000$6,606$24,00,000
3Unfriended$16,023,000$5,850$16,023,000
4Home$10,300,000 (-44.4)$2,953$142,609,000
5The Longest Ride$6,850,000 (-47.4) $2,032$23,511,000
6Get Hard$4,830,000 (-41.2)$1,819$78,279,000
7Monkey Kingdom$4,715,000$2,343$4,715,000
8Woman in Gold$4,587,000 (-16.3)$2,281$15,943,000
9Insurgent$4,150,000 (-38.2)$1,633$120,605,000
10Cinderella$3,871,000 (-45.8)$1,604$186,324,000

With its $29 million weekend, Furious 7 sits at $294 million, which means that it should pass $300 million within the next two days or so. It’s slowed down just enough to make $400 million seem like a big question mark, but $350 million is a definite thing at this point. In fact, it’s going to have to make the rest of its money quickly since Avengers: Age of Ultron is going to wipe it off the top spot for sure when it opens in less than two weeks. Still, even if it stopped making money right now, everyone would be happy. It’s not just the highest grossing film in the series by a wide margin. It’s one of the biggest movies of all time.
In second place, Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 opened with a solid $24 million, which is a bit of dip from the first film, which opened to $31 million in 2009. That film managed to gross $146 million at the domestic box office thanks to some surprisingly strong legs, but it’s difficult to imagine this one (which has received some of the worst reviews we’ve ever seen) topping it. $100 million is definitely an option, but we shall see. The big dogs of the summer are right around the corner and they may kill Mr. Blart before he can even find his footing.
In third place, the horror movie Unfriended opened with a decent $16 million, which isn’t bad for a tiny horror movie with a very modest budget. Like most films of this genre, it’ll probably take a huge dive next weekend before topping out around $25 million or so, but that’s okay. The Blumhouse model is all about tiny budgets making solid returns.
The final wide release of the week, Monkey Kingdom, did what all Disney documentary films do: it opened at a decent number for a nature documentary and probably secured the future of the next entry in this surprisingly strong series. These movies will never do massive business, but they also don’t need to do massive business.
The rest of the top 10 was business as usual. Home continued its steady crawl to $150 million and it should get there by next week. The Longest Ride took the expected dive and it should top out around $30 million. Get Hard continued to do solid business, but $100 million is looking less likely by the weekend. Insurgent really began to slow down and it’ll miss its predecessor’s gross by about $20 million. And in tenth place, Cinderella desperately reached for $200 million, but it may be beyond the film’s grasp at this point (but it’s done well enough, so no one is complaining).

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