Home Entertainment Box Office: ‘Fate Of The Furious’ Races To Possible Record Global Weekend

Box Office: ‘Fate Of The Furious’ Races To Possible Record Global Weekend

Fate of the Furious may not be breaking any records in North America, but it might just set a record pretty much everywhere else. The eighth installment of the street racing/heist caper franchise is doing jaw-droppingly huge business around the world this weekend. The film earned $45.6 million in North America on its opening day, but it earned $112.1m internationally for an early total of $194.8m on Friday (plus whatever it made on China on Saturday thanks to time-zone magic).

The film opened in a few territories on Wednesday and Thursday and earned a record-smushing $65 million in China on Friday. The F. Gary Gray-directed sequel should make around $195m in China alone by Sunday, putting it on course for a $400m+ Chinese total by the time it crosses the finish line.

And if the projections come to pass, we’re looking at a $430.4 million international debut, easily crushing the previous record of $316.7m for Jurassic World. Wow, the studio that put out Jurassic World must be pissed. And if the film does make at least $100m in North America, then we’re looking at a worldwide debut just above the $529m global opening weekend of Star Wars: The Force Awakens. Okay, so the studio that put out The Force Awakens (Walt Disney) might be a little annoyed with that, but it’s good to have goals, right?

Universal/Comcast Corp. released Fate of the Furious into 63 markets this weekend, making up most of the world. It opens in the Philippines today, Serbia and Montenegro on April 20, Poland and Romania on April 21 and Japan on April 28. There is obviously some wiggle room for numbers this huge, but the franchise has now topped $4 billion at the worldwide box office. With numbers like this, it might end this year over the $5b mark, but we’ll see.

The film opened in first place in every single territory in which it debuted, setting the record for the biggest opening day ever in (deep breath) Argentina, China, Colombia, Egypt, India, Indonesia, Israel, Lebanon, Malaysia, Middle East, Pakistan, Peru, Portugal, South Africa, U.A.E. and Venezuela. It set records for Universal’s biggest opening day in 22 territories including Argentina, Colombia, Mexico, Germany and India and was the biggest Fast/Furious franchise debut opening day in 38 territories.

The film has already passed the lifetime overseas totals of The Fast and the Furious ($62.9 million); 2 Fast 2 Furious ($109m) and The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift ($96m).  It will pass Fast & Furious ($197.7m) today and Furious Five ($401.3m) tomorrow on Sunday. And if it doesn’t quite hit $530m worldwide tomorrow, it will easily outgross xXx: Return of Xander Cage ($346m), Fast and the Furious ($207.3m), 2 Fast 2 Furious ($236.4m), Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift ($158.5m) and Fast and Furious ($363.2m) by today or tomorrow.

So yeah, we’ll have much more to dissect tomorrow, but Fate of the Furious may get a lot closer to Furious 7‘s $1.5 billion total than we thought. For at least a weekend, Fast and the Furious may be bigger than Star Wars.

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Source: Forbes