Box Office Week: The Fate of the Furious opens to a solid if not record-breaking $100M domestically. However the film demolished the overseas opening weekend record by more than $100M, opening to $432.3M. It has also dethroned The Force Awakens as the #1 worldwide opening weekend, $532M.

Rank	Title	Domestic Gross (Weekend)	Worldwide Gross (Cume)	Week #
1	The Fate of the Furious	$100,181,640	$532,481,640	1
2	The Boss Baby	$15,540,000	$238,881,247	3
3	Beauty and the Beast (2017)	$13,634,000	$1,043,049,751	5
4	Smurfs: The Lost Village	$6,500,000	$95,028,326	2
5	Going in Style	$6,350,000	$35,076,352	2

Notable Box Office Stories:

• I guess in a way everyone was right about their predictions for The Fate of the Furious. Those predicting that the meteoric jump in sales from Fast & Furious 6 to Furious 7 (I love these titles) was a momentary blip due to the death of Paul Walker and that 8 would settle down to a more reasonable level were correct on the domestic side where FotF opened $47M lower than F7, opening at #1 with $100M. However the other side that predicted F7 was just the latest peak of a still growing franchise nailed it in terms of international sales. See while FotF's domestic opening isn't even in the top 40 of all time (it's not even the best opening of 2017), it now colds the record for #1 highest overseas opening of all time by a whole lot. The film made $432.3M overseas this weekend, which is a $115.6M lead over the previous winner, Jurassic World which made $314M in its overseas opening. In fact that amount is so good the film has now also taken the record for all time worldwide opening from The Force Awakens ($529M), earning a cumulative total of $532M. Again the domestic opening was $47M lower than F7 and $150M lower the TFA's domestic opening weekend. This weekend really shows you how powerful the international appeal of the franchise has become. On the Bill Simons podcast, producer of the franchise Neil Moritz says that almost every TV in the world will have a Fast and Furious film on there somewhere and I believe it. We are seeing Universal pay off from 7 films just existing in cultural spaces around the world for 15 years and now a whole generation of people around the world have grown up with these films, particularly those under the age of 25. In fact the film debuted to #1 in every single one of the 60 territories it premiered in. It also helps that it seems Vin Diesel has become China's biggest star as he once again opens a film huge in China, this time the biggest opening for any film in the country's history, $190M. It's clear the weird, crazy road it took to get the franchise to this point is paying off in full. What's unclear is how long this will last but I think it's safe to say the last ride for the franchise is a very long way away.

• While Fate of the Furious rockets towards becoming the next film of 2017 to break $1B, the first film of the year to do so is now officially Beauty and the Beast (2017) which broke $1B worldwide this week. The film managed to drop fairly slight the last 4 weeks, and is the 4th fastest film to reach $300M domestically. This also means it's surpassed The Jungle Book to be the highest grossing live action remake of a Disney animated film. Once again the split for the film favors mostly domestic, much like the recent $1B Disney films Rogue One and Finding Dory.

• Just a quick little fun find I wanted to share from the weekend numbers. Ever heard of the movie Spark: A Space Tail? It's an animated film about a monkey in space. No not that one, this is a different one. Well you probably haven't head of the film as it opened to #24 to $112K. So sound like a limited release except this movie was released in 365 theaters, which means it has a per theater average of just $308. To compare, A Dog's Purpose is in its 12th week and it has a per theater average of $586. And of course the film is distributed by Open Road Films, making Spark the 6th bomb in a row for the company.

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	$2,421,860	$331,115,484	Unk	33
Moonlight	$27,819,985	$55,781,710	$1.5M	26
Moana	$248,722,114	$637,822,114	$150M	19
La La Land	$150,880,838	$439,020,154	$30M	19
Rogue One: A Star Wars Story	$532,074,947	$1,055,837,837	$200M	18
Sing	$270,229,770	$623,729,770	$75M	17
Split	$137,818,960	$274,018,960	$10M	13
John Wick: Chapter Two	$91,751,134	$161,904,332	$40M	10
Get Out	$167,547,880	$183,547,880	$4.5M	8

Notable Film Closings

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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 17, 2017 at 09:41PM by mi-16evil http://ift.tt/2oPgcbA