Diversity’s the big winner at the box office Jake Coyle
Two multicultural surprises join ‘Furious’ at top
A South India sensation, a Hispanic-focused comedy and the highest-grossing film ever directed by an African American made up the top three films in North America on a culturally diverse box office weekend.
As expected, it was another runaway weekend for The Fate of
the Furious, which took No. 1 for the third straight week with $19.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The eighth film in the franchise also throttled past $1 billion globally and passed its predecessor, Furious 7, to become the highest-grossing imported film in China with $361 million.
The Fast and Furious franchise, the latest of which is helmed by F. Gary Gray, has always been held up as a model of the diverse blockbuster, given its cast led by Vin Diesel and
Dwayne Johnson.
But the smaller films that trailed it over the weekend also reflected the box office might of often underserved audiences.
In second domestically with $12 million and drawing an overwhelmingly Hispanic crowd was Eugenio Derbez’s comedy How to Be a Latin Lover.
Salma Hayek, Rob Lowe and Kristen Bell co-star. But the movie’s top draw is Derbez, whose Instructions Not Included was the highest-grossing Spanish-language film in North America in 2013. The audience for How to be a Latin Lover was 89% Hispanic. In third was Baahubali 2: The
Conclusion, a so-called Tollywood (Telugu language) film from South India, which pulled in a remarkable $10.1 million despite playing on just 420 screens. By comparison, The Fate of the Furious played on more than 4,000.
Baahubali 2 even bested a pair of Hollywood’s biggest stars in Emma Watson and Tom Hanks. Their terribly reviewed thriller
The Circle, adapted from the Dave Eggers novel, opened in fourth place with $9.3 million. Alec Baldwin’s animated The Boss
Baby finished fifth with $9.1 mil- lion in the movie’s fifth week in theaters.
Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for comScore, says such global weekends at the box office will become more common.
“This is the final weekend before the summer season kicks off and the blockbusters hit theaters,” Dergarabedian says. “But this weekend is marked by an incredible amount of multicultural content. It reflects the world we’re living in.”
The summer movie season begins next week with Guardians of
the Galaxy Vol. 2. With the Marvel behemoth on deck, few new films were released in an otherwise quiet weekend.
The Guardians sequel began its international rollout over the weekend, opening in 37 territories ahead of its North American debut. It earned an estimated $101 million, a promising start for what’s expected to be one of summer’s biggest hits.
Guardians likely will be the third $1 billion movie in 2017, following Beauty and the Beast and The Fate of the Furious. Final figures will be released Monday.