In
box
office terms, it took just a quarter-of-a-mile for Furious 7 to cross the $1 billion finish line, as the smash hit sequel surpassed said benchmark in its 17th day of worldwide release. That's the fastest sprint to said milestone in box office history, doing it two days faster than Avatar, The Avengers, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II. The seventh in the long-running Vin Diesel/Paul Walker franchise has earned a whopping $735.2 million overseas along with $273.7 million in fifteen days of domestic play. Its total as of the end of today stands at $1.009 billion, good for the 18th-biggest grossing movie of all time, between The Dark Knight ($1.008b) and Alice in Wonderland ($1.025b). By the end of the weekend, it is likely (but not guaranteed) that Furious 7 will leapfrog over the next nine movies on the chart and become just the tenth movie to earn over $1.1 billion worldwide. If it doesn't cross said milestone by Sunday, it will soon after. At this point, it is only a question of how high it will climb and whether or not it can best the likes of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II ($1.3 billion) and The Avengers ($1.5 billion) to become the biggest-grossing movie of all-time not directed by James Cameron.
The film has become the first Universal/
Comcast
Corp. release to surpass the mark in its original release, as Jurassic Park only did so after a successful 3D reissue in 2013. The franchise overall has earned $3,392 billion worldwide over seven entries, second only to the Star Wars franchise ($4.5 billion over seven films including the Clone Wars theatrical pilot). This weekend ought to be pretty huge as well, as today marks the film's opening day in Japan. This is a frankly remarkable achievement for an ongoing franchise that started as a B-movie street racing caper that didn't really hit its financial stride as a heavy-weight franchise until its fifth film. I would argue that it didn't hit its artistic stride until Fast Five either, but I am aware that Tokyo Drift has its fans. We know the culprits by now, specifically the massive audience goodwill built up from the last few installments, the increased interest over the death of Paul Walker, and the fact that this James Wan film absolutely delivers both as an action spectacular and as an emotionally engaging pay-off for the party faithful.
Yes, much of Furious 7's emotional content stems from how it dealt with the death of one of its stars, including an out-of-context epilogue that very nearly breaks the fourth wall, but at the end of the day the movie works and it absolutely delivers. Obviously a film doesn't get to $1 billion worldwide in record time purely because of quality, but in an era when we see films that no one particularly likes let-alone-loves like Transformers: Age of Extinction or Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides crossing the once-fabled milestone thanks the 3D boost and a sense of borderline obligation among general moviegoers, it's something worthwhile when a film like Furious 7 powers itself past the finish line on the strength of fan loyalty. As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, the triumph of Furious 7 is that it is a franchise that fans love, with the all-important caveat that the franchise seems to love its fans right back. It is conventional wisdom Furious 7 will eventually get clobbered by Avengers: Age of Ultron when said blockbuster starts its worldwide release on Wednesday. But considering how fast and, uh, furious this film has roared out of the gate, that may not be a foregone conclusion.
At the very least, and this has nothing to do with the quality of said Marvel/
Walt Disney
sequel (the reviews will start dropping on Tuesday afternoon), it is likely that Furious 7 will be the zeitgeist-capturing film of the season, just as (for example) Iron Man overshadowed the still wildly-successful Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull in the summer of 2008 or Gladiator trumped Mission: Impossible in the cultural conversation in the summer of 2000. Sometimes the "thunder stealer" out-grosses the preordained champion, as was the case with Spider-Man vs. Attack of the Clones, but sometimes the preordained champion remains the champion, as was the case with The Phantom Menace and The Matrix. All of this is speculation and I may just be giving Rocky Balboa too much credit because he knocked down Apollo Creed in the first round. But the fact that Furious 7 still remains the underdog under these circumstances is pretty indicative of its appeal.
Okay, that's enough for now. I am imagine that, much like Jean Valjean, Dominic Toretto's race is not yet run. There will plenty more Furious 7 box office updates over the next month as we see just how close it can get to that "not directed by James Cameron" title. One last note, just think how much handwringing about the 2014 domestic box office we would have spared ourselves if Furious 7 had come out in July of 2014 as originally intended? Just sayin...
