Furious 7 is honestly the only film we should be talking about this weekend, because it’s going to crush everything in it’s path. There’s talk of it beating the April record (Captain America: The Winter Soldier, $95 million) and easily having the best opening of the series. Here’s the pertinent information/growth:
- Fast & Furious 6 – $97.4 million
- Fast Five – $86.2 million
- Fast and Furious – $70.9 million
I like those numbers, I like the 87 percent on RottenTomatoes, and I like the complete lack of competition. I like the overall “tipping point” for this franchise, it’s now become “event” filmwatching as opposed to making a call on just seeing something. This is the movie you can take anyone to, well anyone who likes action, soliloquies about family, and scantily clad women walking around impromptu car shows. My thinking is $121.5 million, a flat $30,000 per theater. I know I’m seeing it on Sunday as I missed the screening while traveling and while it doesn’t have 3D working in its ticketing favor, it will screen at more than 800 IMAX theatres worldwide, including approximately 445 international and 365 domestic IMAX locations.
Wow did Home crush it last weekend. Clearly, I did not seeing that coming. Children’s films tend not to dip hard, there’s little frontloading on a stable product, and Furious 7 doesn’t eat into it on any real level. Heck, it might actually help as the family dollar drops some children off at this one and takes the teens to Furious 7. $27.8 million is my call, a 45 percent drop, though with that $135 million budget it will need to clear $330+ million to lock in profit. Not out of the woods yet.
Get Hard was another building block in Kevin Hart‘s “most marketable comedian” reputation, this was his second biggest opening, and the top opener was rated PG-13 (Ride Along). I’m going with pretty much “standard dip theory” here with just over a 50% drop and predicting a $16.4 million sophomore frame.
We’re still talking Insurgent are we? Well, I guess “talking” is a bit of a stretch since I’m just going to say I see this one doing $9.9 million this weekend and open the floor to you.
How high will Furious 7 fly? Get your predictions in and share your thoughts in the comments.
SIDE NOTE: Some of the theater numbers below are estimates. We’ll have the actual counts in Sunday’s wrap-up article.
