'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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