Weekend box-office – 18th to 24th of April 2015 – can Furious 7 speed ahead again?

Furious 7’s mega opening in the US last week is already the biggest since 2013’s The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. This week, the all star action sequel faces a clear week with little opposition besides the Nicholas Sparks’ (The Notebook, Dear John) romantic drama The Longest Ride. Meanwhile in the UK there’s a rush more small openers like legal drama Woman in Gold, war thriller Good Kill, comedy sequel Hot Tub Time Machine 2 and action flick John Wick ahead of the Avengers’ behemoth release. Find last week’s predictions here.

US:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – Director: James Wan – $59.6 million
2. Home – Tim Johnson – $18.5 million
3. The Longest Ride – George Tillman Jr – $13 million
4. Get Hard – Etan Cohen – $8.2 million
5. Cinderella – Kenneth Branagh – $7.1 million

UK:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – James Wan – £5.4 million
2. Cinderella – Kenneth Branagh – £1.8 million
3. Home – Tim Johnson – £1.5 million
4. The Duff – Ari Sandel – £0.9 million
5. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water – Phil Tibbitt – £0.7 million

Furious 7 wins again while the UK’s only new entry is high school comedy The Duff. This week I’ve scored 6/10.

US:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – James Wan
2. Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 – Andy Fickman
3. Child 44 – Daniel Espinosa
4. Home – Tim Johnson
5. Unfriended – Levan Gabriadze

UK:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – James Wan
2. Child 44 – Daniel Espinosa
3. Cinderella – Kenneth Branagh
4. Home – Tim Johnson
5. A Little Chaos – Alan Rickman

Paul Walker, Dwayne Johnson and Vin Diesel in Fast & Furious 7, this week’s US and UK number ones.

Weekend box-office – 11th to 17th of April 2015 – is it a top gear opening for Furious 7?

The Fast and Furious franchise has always been varying in financial success: the first three films (The Fast and the Furious, 2 Fast 2 Furious, The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift) achieved B-movie levels of success and a cult following on around $150 million to $250 million. The series then exploded into success with Fast & Furious ($360 million), Fast Five ($630 million) and Fast & Furious 6 ($790 million). The seventh instalment is now getting its delayed release, after the tragic death of star Paul Walker, under the new direction of James Wan (The Conjuring). Last week, we predicted it’d take top spot but its surprisingly become a bigger that then we’d imagined.

US:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – James Wan – $147.2 million
2. Home – Tim Johnson – $27 million
3. Get Hard – Etan Cohen – $13.1 million
4. Cinderella – Kenneth Branagh – $10.2 million
5. Insurgent – Robert Schwentke – $10.1 million

UK:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – James Wan – £12.8 million
2. Cinderella – Kenneth Branagh – £3 million
3. Home – Tim Johnson – £2.4 million
4. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water – Paul Tibbitt – £1.1 million
5. Get Hard – Etan Cohen – £0.8 million

Hopefully this debut is a pre-cursor to upcoming commercial greatness in 2015’s box office. Furious 7’s opening weekend has already outdone that of Guardians of the Galaxy ($95 million), Transformers: Age of Extinction ($100 million), The Hunger Games: Mockingjay ($120 million), Fifty Shades of Grey ($85 million), X-Men: Days of Future Past ($95 million), Godzilla ($95 million), The Amazing Spider-Man 2 ($90 million) and Captain America: The Winter Soldier ($95 million) as well as predecessors Fast Five ($85 million) and Six ($97 million). We’d have to stretch back to 2013 or 2012 to find this kind of box-office smashing with the likes of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire ($155 million), Man of Steel ($115 million), The Dark Knight Rises ($160 million), Iron Man 3 ($175 million) and The Avengers ($210 million). This week I’ve scored 5/10.

US:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – James Wan
2. Home – Tim Johnson
3. Ex Machina – Alex Garland
4. Get Hard – Etan Cohen
5. Cinderella – Kenneth Branagh

UK:

1. Furious 7 – James Wan
2. Cinderella – Kenneth Branagh
3. John Wick – Chad Stahelski, David Leitch
4. Home – Tim Johnson
5. The Duff – Ari Sandel

Paul Walker, Vin Diesel and Nathalie Emmanuel in Fast & Furious 7, this week’s US and UK number one.

Weekend box-office – 28th of January to 6th of February 2015 – will Fifty Shades retain its top spot?

Last week, The graphic adaptation of the novel Fifty Shades of Grey opened with incredible figures both sides of the Atlantic with $85 million in the US and £13 million in the UK. It seems set for another week of incredible takings but its not thriving as well as expected. Its low takings might be setting up spy thriller Kingsman: The Secret Service for a second week comeback while sequel Hot Tub Time Machine 2, comedy The DUFF and sports drama McFarland USA compete to grace the top five.

US:

1. Fifty Shades of Grey – Director: Sam Taylor Johnson – $22.6 million
2. Kingsman: The Secret Service – Matthew Vaughn – $18.3 million
3. The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge Out of Water – Paul Tibbitt – $16.6 million
4. McFarland USA – Niki Caro – $11 million
5. The DUFF – Ari Sandel – $10.8 million

UK:

1. Fifty Shades of Grey – Sam Taylor Johnson – £4.6 million
2. Big Hero 6 – Don Hall, Chris Williams – £2.6 million
3. Shaun the Sheep Movie – Mark Burton, Richard Starzak – £2.4 million
4. Kingsman: The Secret Service – Matthew Vaughn – £1.2 million
5. The Wedding Ringer – Jeremy Garelick – £1 million

Its been an almost non-mover week besides the low ranking new entries. Despite keeping the number one spot, Fifty Shades has suffered a catastrophic 75% drop. Hot Tub Time Machine two is a dire flop with a mere $6 million in seventh place. This week I’ve scored 2/10

US:

1. Focus – Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
2. Fifty Shades of Grey – Sam Taylor Johnson
3. Kingsman: The Secret Service – Matthew Vaughn
4. The Sponge Bob Movie: Sponge Out of Water – Paul Tibbitt
5. McFarland USA – Niki Caro

UK:

1. Fifty Shades of Grey – Sam Taylor Johnson
2. Focus – Glenn Ficarra, John Requa
3. Big Hero 6 – Don Hall, Chris Williams
4. Shaun the Sheep Movie – Mark Burton, Richard Starzak
5. It Follows – David Robert Mitchell

Jamie Dornan in Fifty Shades of Grey, this week’s US and UK number one.