Furious 7, the seventh installment of Universal Pictures’ blockbuster franchise, has set a new benchmark for the series and for the month of April with an estimated $67.3 million on its opening Friday (including Thursday previews).
Starring Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson, Jason Statham, Michelle Rodriguez and the late Paul Walker and directed by “newcomer” James Wan (Insidious), the movie opened on Thursday night to the tune of $15.8 million, already surpassing the $10.2 million Thursday estimates for the previous April opening record-holder, Marvel Studios’ Captain America: The Winter Soldier. On Friday, it expanded into just over 4,000 theaters including IMAX screens where it averaged over $16,000 per venue with the IMAX theaters doing substantially better than others.
The previous installment, Fast and Furious 6, opened on the Friday before Memorial Day 2013 with $38.7 million on its way to $97.4 million in its first three days, but for better comparison, Marvel’s Iron Man 3 had a $69 million opening day in May 2013 and grossed $174 million in its opening weekend, while The Dark Knight opened with $67.1 million (in July) and grossed $158 million its opening weekend.
It will be hard to tell how frontloaded Furious 7 will be since it opened on Good Friday, a school holiday, which could mean that Friday is likely to be its biggest day, but it’s looking very likely to gross at least $150 million over the Easter holiday weekend, which would put it in the Top 10 opening weekends of all time just behind Spider-Man 3 and before the biggest installments of The Twilight Saga.
Stay tuned to ComingSoon for our full box office report tomorrow to see how it fared.
