‘Furious 7’ headed to new franchise heights

Furious 7 is still speeding at the box office.

Retaining more week two power than expected, Universal’s latest instalment in the street-racing saga with Vin Diesel and Jason Statham held on to the top spot for the second straight week with an estimated $18.8 million (Dh69 million) across 4,022 screens on Friday. It’s expected to blow past the $250-million cumulative mark domestically by the end of the weekend.

Universal already says Furious 7 has been the quickest of any of its movies to cross the $200-million threshold. That should help pay for the reported 230 vehicles that were demolished making the film.

Furious 7 is the first film released in the Fast & Furious franchise since the death of star Paul Walker, who was killed in a crash halfway through production. If projections hold, the movie will end up the most popular Furious by far, beating 2013’s Fast & Furious 6, which topped out at $238 million domestically.

With Furious 7 burning on all cylinders, little juice was left for other releases on a post-spring-break weekend.

The Longest Ride, the 10th screen adaptation of a Nicholas Sparks romance novel, opened at No 3, with a $5.5-million Friday and a respectable $1,634 per-screen average. 20th Century Fox’s Ride may end up cruising past last year’s The Best of Me, which with a $35-million cumulative gross was the worst-performing of the Sparks adaptations. But it’s unlikely to get near The Notebook, Dear John or Message in a Bottle, Sparks’ biggest movie hits, each of which kept tugging heartstrings well past $100 million.

The No 2 spot went to Fox’s Home, an animated extraterrestrial fantasy that has the bulk of the family-film market to itself now that Disney’s live-action Cinderella is fading after a month of release. Home drew $5.6 million on Friday and entered its third week with $116 million in total. Cinderella had to settle for the fifth spot, with a $2.3-million start to the weekend, but its cumulative gross has now risen past $175 million.

At No 4 with $2.6 million Friday was Get Hard, the buddy comedy with Will Ferrell and Kevin Hart, which is a bit soft at the box office thanks to negative reviews and word of mouth (moviegoers polled by CinemaScore gave the movie a B). Get Hard has grossed a cumulative $65 million so far.