FURIOUS 7 shatters records!

Furious 7 raced at the top of the chart breaking all time records in the process. The newest entry in the franchise grossed a whopping $143.6 million shattering the prior April record set last year by 'Captain America: The Winter Soldier with $97.2 million. This ranks not only as the biggest opening for any ‘Fast & Furious’ film, but also as the 9th biggest opening ever. The action film also opened big overseas for a worldwide three days total of $384 million. It expected that this film will finish its ww total with over $1 billion. The film benefitted from the almost sure misleading advertisement tagline of ‘One last ride’ making casual fans think this will be the last film in franchise (and I have a bridge to sell you at a cheap price!), the morbid curiosity of watching Paul Walker in his last film (death always sell), plus the glowing reviews by critics didn’t hurt a bit. The audience was split almost evenly between male & female over the age of 25. Also a big chunk of the audience (37%) was Hispanic, a demographic that has always supported these films.

In a far, far distant second place, last week’s #1, film Dreamworks Animation Home had a 47% drop with $27.4 million which brings its 10 days total to $97 million. Good numbers, but not on Disney levels.

The Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard took $12.9 million in the third spot. That is a 62% decline from its debut which means that the film most likely will fail to reach the $100 million mark.

Holding firmly in the fourth place Disney’s Cinderella collected $10.2 million with just a healthy 40% decline. After four weeks the re-imagined fairy tale has grossed $167.3 million. Worldwide the film will reach the $400 million mark sometime this week. Can you blame Disney for green-lightning a live action 'Dumbo' helmed by Tim Burton? I can tell you now that I expect the death scene of Dumbo’s mom to be extremely grim and his alcohol induced hallucinations to border in the creepy Burtonesque department.

In the fifth spot The Divergent Series: Insurgent gained $10 million for a three weeks domestic total of $103.3 million. Worldwide the film has grossed so far $223.7 million. While that sounds good, the studio is very disappointed as this sequel numbers have not improved one bit over its cheaper predecessor...in fact is performing poorer, but not by much, though: the previous film had a $85 million budget, grossed $150 million domestically and $288 worldwide. This one cost $110 million to produce without counting the marketing, will not reach $150 domestically and is unlikely will reach the $288 million...unless those unpredictable chinese and japanese moviegoers decide to prove me wrong in a couple of months.

Even adding more theaters each passing week, the very hyped, critically acclaimed horror film It Follows continues to fail to lure audiences. With 437 more locations added this weekend for a total of over 1655 screens, the film only managed to gross $2.4 million for a four weeks total of $8.5 million. In comparison the less hyped, critically bashed, non-marketed faith based film Do you believe? had better numbers in less screens and less weeks in released.