'Furious 7' takes massive start in North America

Scenes from thefilmFast and Furious 7. Photo provided toChina Daily

American Action film "Furious 7, " which debuted on April 10, dominated this Easter weekend's North American box office as it broke the prior records to hit a stunning $143.6 million in ticket sales.

"Furious 7" was shown at 4,004 locations in America and Canada, and with the revenue of $143.6 million, which was 47 percent higher than earnings raked by "Fast and Furious 6" in 2013, the new sequel easily dethroned "Captain America: The Winter Soldier," which debuted with $95 million in ticket sales, to become the new April record holder.

Distributed by Universal Pictures, "Furious 7" was starring Vin Diesel, Dwayne Johnson and the late Paul Walker who was killed in a car accident as the movie was being shot in late 2013. Internationally, the new sequel opened to an estimated $240 million of earnings, which didn't include China, Japan and Russia, where it will open in the next few weeks. So far, "Furious 7" has grossed $384 million worldwide.

With an "A" CinemaScore and an approval rating of 82 percent from RottenTomatoes.com, the movie's audience was almost split evenly between men and women, and skewed a bit to moviegoers over the age of 25.

DreamWorks Animation's "Home," which was last weekend's number one film, fell 47 percent to an estimated $27.4 million, according to studio estimates gathered by Rentrak. It has earned nearly $95.6 million in two weekends.

Warner Bro's "Get Hard" was in the third place with an estimated revenue of $12.9 million, which is off 62 percent from opening weekend. The film has grossed $57 million since last week.

Rounding out the ten most-popular films this weekend were " Cinderella" ($10.3 million), "Divergent Series: Insurgent" ($10 million), "It Follows" ($2.5 million), "Woman In Gold" ($2 million), "Kingsmen: The Secret Service" ($1.7 million), "Do You Believe?" ($1.5 million) and "Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel" ($1 million).

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