Box Office Week: The Fate of the Furious is #1 again with $38.6M, topping $900M worldwide in just two weeks. Other than Born in China (#4, $5M) all new releases flop: Unforgettable (#7, $4.8M), the $90M budgeted The Promise (#9, $4M), Phoenix Forgotten (#11, $2M), and Free Fire (#17, $1M).

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	The Fate of the Furious	$38,682,095	$908,378,315	2
2	The Boss Baby	$12,750,000	$358,100,325	4
3	Beauty and the Beast (2017)	$9,973,000	$1,043,049,751	6
4	Born in China	$5,147,000	$14,647,000	1
5	Going in Style	$5,005,000	$50,865,843	3

Notable Box Office Stories:

• Despite having no real competition this week (more on that below) The Fate of the Furious held just okay, dropping 60% for its second weekend coming in at #1 with $38.6M. It seems that predictors who said Furious 7's $300M+ domestic haul was an anomaly were correct as now the film is performing a lot like Fast Five and Fast & Furious 6. FotF should settle just a little bit over those films by the end of its run but far behind Furious 7's domestic take. Internationally however the film is still exploding. Worldwide it has now passed $900M making it the 43rd highest grossing film of all time in just two weeks. A lot of that of course is coming from China where the film has already made $300M and seems to be on it's way to challenging The Mermaid as the highest grossing film in that country. The film is destined to hit $1B this week so the interesting record to see it possibly set will be as the lowest grossing domestic film to reach $1B worldwide. Currently that title belongs to Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides which grossed $1.04B worldwide but just $241.1M domestic. Only 23% of the film's gross came from domestic. However the bigger split belongs to Transformers: Age of Extinction which made $1.1B worldwide and $245.4M domestic, a split of 22% domestic. Fate of the Furious seems pretty prime to manage to beat those records as the film is approaching the $1B mark with 18% of total gross coming from domestic, a haul of $163.6M. Now we can't confirm this record until the film closes in 6 months, but it is already fascinating to see how far the franchise has moved away from the US in terms of relevancy. Fast & Furious is just the latest franchise to find much wider appeal overseas that will guarantee the film's success even if the bottom falls out domestically. Even more interesting is that this year the other challengers for this weird record have films out this year, with new Transformers and Pirates films coming out this summer.

• This week was an incredibly weird mishmash of wide releases trying to soak up that post Fate of the Furious crowd and to mostly very little success. The one film that performed right on point was Born in China the latest Disneynature documentary film which opened to a predictable if small $5.1M at #4. This is a marked improvement over the last two films in the series (Monkey Kingdom and Bears), but nowhere near the heights of Chimpanzee or Earth. However "heights" is a strong word to use for this series as only one film has opened over $10M and none of them have made $50M+ domestic. The box office releases of these films are really mostly to cover costs while the films make a lot more money on home video and streaming sales as well as selling educational versions to schools.

• Don't call your movie Unforgettable then have it bomb at the box office, you are just asking for puns. The film, the latest modern update of the Fatal Attraction model, opened to just $4.8M at #7. This marks a career low for Katherine Heigl as the worst wide release opening of her career. It also is the worst wide release opening for Rosario Dawson since The Adventures of Pluto Nash. The film had a wide open space to make a decent amount post-Fate but couldn't even crack the top 5 and will struggle to make back even it's meager $12M budget. Fun fact: For Heigl's next film to have the lowest opening of any kind of her career would mean a film would have to break the record for worst opening of all time. Yup a Katherine Heigl film, Zyzzyx Road, has the worst opening weekend ever where the film made (and this is true) just $20.00. The lifetime domestic gross of Zyzzyx Road is $30.00, the lowest domestic gross ever. Just a fun little bit of trivia for you for the day.

• While there were films that opened worse this weekend the biggest loser in terms of budget v box office was The Promise which cost $90M to make but grossed only $4M this week opening at #9. The film about the Armenian genocide starring Oscar Issac and Christian Bale had a tough road to the box office. The Promise got a lot of attention when people noticed that the IMDB ratings for the film had been bombarded by negative reviews before release, eventually being revealed to be pro-Turkish operatives who want to cover up the genocide. However non-Turkish critics weren't big fans of the film either saying it couched a tragedy in a sappy love story. All of this isn't the real reason the film failed but it's part of it. The real reason is this is a film made to win a whole lot of Oscars but just isn't good enough. It's very much made in the old school Ghandi/English Patient/Out of Africa mold but those kinds of films don't really do very well at the Oscars any more and now films like this and The Zookeeper's Wife are relegated to March and April dumping grounds. Without a lot of buzz the film was doomed, especially with Open Road Films being the main distributor who once again have another massive bomb on their hands. Thankfully ORF and others don't have to be too worried about the film's financials coming back to them. The film was the brainchild of Kirk Kerkorian, the billionaire owner of MGM who wanted to bring international attention to the Armenian genocide. Before his death he paid for the whole film out of pocket and all profits will go to the Armenian Society. However the film will barely cover distribution costs so unless it can find an audience overseas it's unlike the film will generate much revenue for its charities.

• Another pun worthy release Phoenix Forgotten, a sci-fi horror found footage movie about a real life UFO sighting, opened to $2M at #11. Certainly seems like a major bomb, but with a budget of only $2.8M the film should end up fine especially on VOD where horror has a good post box office life. Interestingly it seems found footage has really lost its mark on the box office lately, especially with Paranormal Activity series seeming to be done. Of course it only takes one new hit in the genre to reignite the whole style.

• The latest from Ben Wheatly couldn't translate a good cast and good reviews into any interest as Free Fire bombed, opening to $1M at #17. The film was only the second wide release for growing indie distributor A24 and it far underperformed from the previous wide release The VVitch which opened to $8.8M (though that film was in twice the theaters). Free Fire isn't doing well in Wheatly's native UK either where it's grossed just $1M as well. With a budget of just $10M the film will probably find enough of a life in streaming and VOD to survive but just barely.

Films Reddit Wants to Follow

This is a segment where we keep a weekly tally of currently showing films that aren't in the Top 5 that fellow redditors want updates on. If you'd like me to add a film to this chart, make a comment in this thread.

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget	Week #
Your Name	$3,737,776	$353,259,859	Unk	34
Moonlight	$27,834,858	$55,792,823	$1.5M	27
Moana	$248,754,321	$639,554,321	$150M	20
La La Land	$151,047,530	$440,784,895	$30M	20
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	$532,132,909	$1,055,895,799	$200M	19
Sing	$270,281,425	$626,381,425	$75M	18
Split	$137,975,995	$274,575,995	$10M	14
John Wick: Chapter Two	$91,957,388	$163,708,399	$40M	11
Get Out	$170,330,855	$189,030,855	$4.5M	9

Notable Film Closings

Title	Domestic Gross (Cume)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Budget
Jackie	$13,960,394	$25,069,514	$9M
Fist Fight	$32,187,017	$40,987,017	$25M

As always /r/boxoffice is a great place to share links and other conversations about box office news.

Also you can see the archive of all Box Office Week posts at /r/moviesboxoffice.

Submitted April 25, 2017 at 12:00AM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2pYvuvp