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'The Fate of the Furious' is the new record-holder for worldwide opening weekends

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'The Fate of the Furious' review
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Everyone knew The Fate of the Furious was going to have a big opening weekend, but exactly how big was the real question.

And the answer? Well, if the weekend estimates hold true, there isn’t any movie ever made that had a bigger premiere than this one.

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Over the course of the film’s three-day premiere in the U.S., China, Mexico, the U.K., and 60 other international markets around the world, The Fate of the Furious raked in a massive $532.4 million. That debut eclipses the previous worldwide, opening weekend record of $529 million set by Star Wars: Episode VII – The Force Awakens in 2015.

As box-office pundits have pointed out, however, The Force Awakens didn’t open in China — the second largest movie market in the world — until nearly a month after its U.S. debut.

Still, that was far from the only record set by the eighth installment of the blockbuster action franchise.

# Title Weekend U.S. Total Worldwide Total
1. The Fate of the Furious $100.1M $100.1M $532.4M
2. The Boss Baby $15.5M $116.3M $238.8M
3. Beauty and the Beast $13.6M $454.6M $1,043M
4. Smurfs: The Lost Village $6.5M $24.7M $95M
5. Going in Style $6.3M $23.3M $35M
6. Gifted $3M $4.3M $4.3M
7. Get Out $2.9M $167.5M $183.5M
8. Power Rangers $2.8M $80.5M $128.2M
9. The Case for Christ $2.7M $8.4M $8.4M
10. Kong: Skull Island $2.6M $161.2M $552.3M

Along with setting the worldwide premiere record, The Fate of the Furious also had the biggest domestic opening weekend of all time for an African-American filmmaker, and broke the opening-weekend record for China. The film is also the biggest opening weekend for any of Charlize Theron’s films, and the second biggest opening weekend for stars Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson — with only 2015’s Furious 7 ahead of it.

Basically, it’s making the film’s creative team and studio Universal Pictures very, very happy.

As for the rest of the weekend’s films, the remainder of the top ten movies were all returning projects — mainly due to studios’ wise decision not to release anything on the same weekend as The Fate of the Furious.

Although it didn’t make it into the ten highest-grossing films over the weekend, Logan passed a major milestone by crossing the $600 million mark worldwide — making it one of only four rated-“R” movies to do so. It now joins The Passion of the Christ, Deadpool, and The Matrix Reloaded in that small group of films.

The upcoming week will almost certainly provide a repeat performance for The Fate of the Furious at the top of the box office, as it doesn’t face any major challengers. Among the new films hitting theaters are the crime caper Free Fire, romantic thriller Unforgettable, historical drama The Promise, and the found-footage, alien-abduction movie Phoenix Forgotten.

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Rick Marshall
Rick Marshall
Former Digital Trends Contributor
A veteran journalist with more than two decades of experience covering local and national news, arts and entertainment, and…
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