The Weekend Report: Furious 7 Rules the Box Office for Another Weekend

In which I run down the big winners (and losers) at the box office this weekend

I'm honestly not all that shocked to report that Furious 7 managed an easy victory over its competition this weekend, outpacing the second place earner by a sizable $41 million.  Its historic haul the previous weekend, strong word-of-mouth since its release and the lack of anything in the way of serious competition all lead to what was already a foregone conclusion.  I expect that this is pretty much what every weekend before Age of Ultron's release is going to look like.

After catching the emotional send-off to Paul Walker at the end of the movie, I've decided to go  back and watch the rest of the series, since I've only seen the first one until now.  After discovering that Family Video's been checked out of the series all week, however, we finally sucked it up and rented The Fast and the Furious through the Playstation Network.  We have five more to get through before seeing Furious 7, so you can expect a belated review of that sometime in the next week or two.

The only new release to hit theaters this week was The Longest Ride: a Nicholas Sparks movie that even his usual base of romantically unfulfilled women seem to be uninterested in.  Coming in at only third place, it has to be a major disappointment for Fox, whose upcoming Fantastic Four reboot doesn't look especially promising either.

Other than that, our new faces on the list are all small releases that expanded into a few more locations this weekend.  The Woman in Gold depicts a woman suing the Austrian government for ownership of a famous painting of her aunt that was stolen by Nazis in the late 1930s.  Danny Collins follows an aging pop musician trying to reconnect with his estranged son and his family.  While We're Young is the movie where Ben Stiller becomes a latter-day hipster.

Only The Woman in Gold looks like it's any good, and even then only about as average as other early in the year dramas like MacFarland USA.  I will be checking that out at some point this week.  The rest I can easily skip (especially considering that they're not even widely released enough to be playing near me).

Box Office Standings:

1)  Furious 7 - $59.5m

2)  Home - $18.5m

3) The Longest Ride - $13m

4)  Get Hard - $8.2m

5)  Cinderella - $7.1m

6)  Insurgent - $6.7m

7)  The Woman in Gold - $5.4m

8)  It Follows - $1.9m
9)  Danny Collins - $1.4m
10)  While We're Young - $1.3m

So what movie did you see in theaters this last weekend?  Share your thoughts in the comment section below.

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