Fast and Furious 7 led the US box office over the weekend for the third consecutive week, scoring another $29.1m (£19.5m) to add to its $294.4m (£197.3m) total.
The hit sequel, which features the last on-screen appearance of Paul Walker, also broke a global record by becoming the fastest film to ever make $1bn at the box office. By the end of Sunday, it had made $1.153bn, which now makes it the seventh biggest film of all time.
In second place was the Kevin James comedy Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2 which made a decent $24m. It’s impressive when you look at the film’s 0% Rotten Tomatoes rating but less so when you look at the opening for the first film, which was a stellar $31.8m.
Making a strong impression in third place was another new entry, the social media horror movie Unfriended. The film made $16m from a budget of just $1m and marked yet another cheaply made success story for Blumhouse, the production company behind The Boy Next Door (budget: $4m, global box office: $48m), Ouija (budget: $5m, global box office: $99m) and The Purge (budget: $3m, global box office: $89m).
Elsewhere, animated adventure Home continued to do strong business in fourth place, adding another $10.3m to its $142.6m total while the Nicholas Sparks adaptation The Longest Ride fell fast with $6.8m for a $23.5m total.
Outside of the top 10, the Jonah Hill/James Franco thriller True Story opened with an unspectacular $1.9m from 831 screens. Doing far worse however was the Tom Hardy/Gary Oldman thriller Child 44 which made just $600k from 500 cinemas. The film had a $50m budget but had suffered from negative buzz and dismal reviews.
The biggest arthouse hit for the second weekend running was Alex Garland’s sci-fi drama Ex Machina which made $814k from just 39 cinemas, giving it the biggest screen average for any film in release.
US box office chart 17-19 April
-
Fast & Furious 7: $29.1m, $294.4m
- Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2: $24m – New
- Unfriended: $16m – New
- Home: $10.3m, $142.6m
- The Longest Ride: $6.8m, $23.5m
- Get Hard: $6.8m, $78.2m
- Monkey Kingdom: $4.7m – New
- Woman in Gold: $4.5m
- The Divergent Series: Insurgent: $4.1m, $120.6m
- Cinderella: $3.8m, $186.3m
