my my my

Impressive. Annoying, but impressive.

Wow, that is completely huge.

What an amazing total so far for China. It's impossible to Not make a #8 and even a #9 based on China alone.

Jeeeeeezus. This is too incredible.

218m yuan on Saturday, or about $35.2m. Should be looking at a $88-90m weekend in China and $250m after 8 days. $400m looks set with May 1st Labor Day holiday coming up.

mother of god. And F6 only made 66 million there!?

Damn. If it weren't for Frozen in Japan last year this would be the most impressive international performance for a Hollywood movie this decade pretty easily. Even Avengers 2 doing $400+ million in China wouldn't be as impressive, because that would make so, so much more sense than this is.

Yeah, Avengers needs to pass $2 billion+ for me to be remotely as impressed as Fast's performance.

TA2 at this rate become the 3rd highest grossing movie WW and still be a dissapointment.

Funny how high expectations are. It is rare that something with such high expectations delivers (if only because it is so expected), but we will see.

Sunday numbers from China.

Sunday(4/19/2015) estimates
#/Title: Daily(yuan)~Total(yuan)~Total($)
1.Furious 7: 198M~1566M~$252.7M #2 all time grosser
2.Ever Since We Love: 24.8M~73.3M~$11.8M
3.Wolf Warriors: 9.3M~489M~$78.9M
4.Mortdecai: 4.7M~13.4M~$2.2M
5.The Queens:1.5M~11.7M~$1.9M


(Current exchange rate $=6.196 Yuan).

$294.4m domestic
$858.3m INTL
$1.1527b WW

Can it have enough leftover to pass the first Avengers WW?

Looks like at least $150 m from China, at least $50 m from domestic market, so that's $1.35 B right there. Holdovers from the rest of the world will probably get to about $1.5 B.

So Avengers is at $1.518 B so very well could reach #3 of all time, but may only hold it for 1-2 weeks before Avengers takes it back.

Who the hell woulda thought Furious 7 would be the first non-James Cameron film to top 1 billion overseas. Christ.

The studio that brought us Jurassic Park, ET, and Jaws, finally reached $1 billion in an original release with a franchise that up until 5 years ago was considered potentially direct to video material?

Regardless of what people think about the Fast franchise, I think its firmly in Hollywood movie history with this latest installment of the franchise. There's no denying that now. It's kind of entered "phenomenon" levels of box office here.

$400 m + in China, $1 B overseas, $350 m domestic total with a seventh film that is nearly 50% above its predecessor? Unreal!

Actually, I don't think so. I think it will still be #3 ever overseas by the end of the year. I see it getting to $1.15-1.2 billion overseas and I don't think either Star Wars or Age of Ultron will get there. I realize that the market has expanded immensely, but I don't see The Force Awakens increasing THAT much over Sith, especially with the sour aftertaste left by the prequels. $800-900 million OS, yes, but $1.2 billion? One must not underestimate how enormous Furious 7's numbers are.

This is what I'm thinking.

Especially with less favorable exchange rates.

Look like Sunday actual in China was 174.92m yuan for a total of 1.54b yuan, or $248.5m: http://www.cbooo.cn/movieday.

That was a big overestimation. However the number is still very good.

This is a bit of a pet peeve now, and I get the exchange rate argument. But that exact same argument was said to me before Fast made $1 billion + when I said it would do $1 billion +. People responded that there were bad exchange rates and it wouldn't. It's on its way to $1.4-1.5 billion! So exchange rates caused it to be $600 m off on the upside?

Math: Some emerging markets may have seen a 30%+ increase in theaters in 5 years (rough, rough estimate), but exchange rates are unfavorable and perhaps $1 USD goes less far than 5 years ago in that market and is worth 20% less. The sheer growth of the market, higher attendance, can still lead to huge growth in a film's box office and isn't an excuse for why it won't reach a certain benchmark, though it IS A FACTOR.

Hypothetical: If 10 million people saw a movie 5 years ago at a ticket price of $5 and 13 million saw the sequel with a $7 ticket (since often higher rate of inflation and fast growth market for tickets), but the local currency is worth 20% less than five years ago:

2010: $50 m USD contributed from that market
2015: $91 m USD in 2010 USD but with 20% less $72.8 m USD

+45.6% increase in box office from more moviegoers starting to watch films in the country due to more theaters being build, becoming more mainstream for people to watch in theaters, ticket price increase, but decreased exchange rate. I'm not denying that it doesn't matter, but let's get serious, anything can happen at the box office if people REALLY want to see a movie. And there are other factors at play that can still override the poorer exchange rates. I am sure my math and analysis is probably way off and I'm not an economist, but there has to be some element of truth somewhere in this argument? (End rant)

So, what happens if they shoot Furious 8 in China?

Of course it won't have the Walker effect but I would guess that $600m wouldn't be that much of a stretch?

At $272m now in China, and should be at $290m going into the weekend. Does seem to be looking at a 55% weekend drop, but that'll still be close to $40m for a $330m total by Sunday.

That will never happen.