Thank goodness for the imminent release of Avengers: Age Of Ultron, because we’re nearly out of suitable Furious 7 header images. In its fourth week at the domestic box office, the seventh film in the venerable, vroom-vroom franchise made off with first place and $18.2 million. That brings the film’s domestic take to $320.5 million, with total worldwide earnings topping off around $1.32 billion. That’s approximately 4.2 million 10-pound bottles of NOS (yes, I Googled it).
Yet Furious 7’s, erm, furious run is about to come to a crashing halt, with the release of Avengers: Age Of Ultron this week. We’re not even guessing here! The numbers are already proven! The second Avengers film and the 8,471 MCU film in general has already opened in a number of foreign markets, where it’s cleaned up quite handily (mental note: think up a bunch more Avengers-related headlines, start hoarding Avengers header images), making $201 million this weekend. Let us all bask in the glory of a final Furious-fueled box office weekend. Smells like burnt rubber!
This weekend wasn’t a particularly exciting one for new releases, though the widest new opener, the Blake Lively-starring The Age Of Adaline, did manage to never-age into third place, making $13.4 million along the way. The dreamy romance is the very definition of counter-programming, a solid choice for movie-goers not interested in seeing Furious 7 again or seeing Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 (second place: $15.5 million) ever. Also, it’s kind of lovely, despite the inclusion of something that can only be deemed a “dead dog scrapbook” (this is not a spoiler; if someone can live forever, they’re going to leave some deceased pets in their wake).
Elsewhere, a pair of war-centric features opened up in 13th and 14th place, with the shockingly offensive Little Boy magicking $2.8 million into its teensy grasp, and Russell Crowe’s directorial debut The Water Diviner grabbing $1.25 million behind it. (Oddly enough, Little Boy made its bucks in a wide release, while The Water Diviner opened in just 320 theaters, making it the actual winner of this bad-taste horse race).
Ex Machina added 1,216 theaters, mechanically but attractively offering it a hand up to sixth place (from fifteenth), and adding $5.4 million to its total domestic take. Turns out, people love robots! The film is already distributor A24’s second highest earning film, behind Spring Breakers, which made $14.1 million during its own box office run. People also love spring break!
Beyond the Ex Machina bump and the Adaline release, the rest of the top 10 stayed mostly the same (both Cinderella and The Divergent Series: Insurgent finally slipped out of the upper ranks after over a month spent in the top ten). Home has continued to rack up the dollars, though its $153 million domestic dollars aren’t enough to push it past other DreamWorks winners like the Shrek series of the How To Train Your Dragon franchise, and it still ranks as only the 16th biggest earner for the animation studio overall. The Nicholas Sparks brand continues to waver, however, as The Longest Ride is the ninth best earner for the author out of 10 films. The lowest-earning Sparks film is The Best Of Me, which opened just last year. What about The Notebook 2, huh?
Next week, we’ll talk about Avengers: Age Of Ultron! (Or, someone will, I’ll be off that day, but the Monday after, we’ll talk about Avengers: Age Of Ultron!)