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16th Apr 2017

Fast & Furious 8 has just smashed records by having the biggest worldwide box office opening of all time

Rory Cashin

This is all “preliminary”, with the actual final figures set to arrive on Monday morning, but at the moment it is looking very good for the Universal franchise.

The previous record holder for the highest worldwide box office weekend was Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens, which amassed $529 million.

As it stands, early estimates have Fast & Furious 8 banking $100 million in the States and a further $430.4 million internationally, giving us a grand total of $530.4 million worldwide, less than half a million more than Episode VII.

While the U.S. opening of $100m is quite a bit less than Furious 7’s $147m, it has completely smashed the previous international record holder Jurassic World’s total ($317m) by a huge margin of almost $115m.

It was also significantly less than this year’s biggest U.S. opening weekend to date, when Beauty & The Beast made $175m, and is currently sitting with $455m in the U.S. alone, and a worldwide total of $1.044 billion.

Fast & Furious 8 probably won’t match Beauty’s U.S. numbers – estimates have it ending up with around $230m stateside – but will most likely surpass it in worldwide numbers.

The movie made $190 million in China alone, the biggest opening weekend for any movie in that country’s box office history.

Clip via KinoCheck International

Furious 7 is currently the biggest entry in the franchise, making $1.516 billion worldwide, and industry estimates expect the eighth entry to at least equal that.

The series has now made over $4.4 billion worldwide, making it the most successful franchise in Universal’s history.

In other record-breaker’y news, this will soon become the biggest box office hit for any movie by an African-American director.

The current record holder is Jordan Peele with his movie Get Out currently on $167 million in the States, who replaced F. Gary Gray when he directed Straight Outta Compton which made $161 million.

But no hard feelings, we guess, cos guess who directed Fast & Furious 8? Yup, it was F. Gary Gray.

And ICYMI, here’s how we figured it measured up against the other movies in the series to date.

 

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