Fast & Furious 7 Makes Box Office History With Massive Opening Weekend

Vin Diesel and Paul Walker’s last dance together was always going to be a box office goldmine, but ‘Fast & Furious 7’ has smashed a raft of records following its release on Friday.

Even without openings in major markets including China, Russia and Japan - which will follow soon - it has made a staggering $392.2 million (£263.8 million) worldwide in a single weekend, covering its $250 million (£168 million) production budget, and likely its marketing and publicity budget too.

In the US alone, it scored a massive $147.2 million (£99 million) over its opening weekend, the biggest opening for a film from the Universal studio ever, smashing 'Fast & Furious 6’s $97.4 million (£65.5 million) and throwing shade on 'Fifty Shades of Grey’s $85.2 million (£57.3 million).

It also sailed into the top 10 biggest opening weekends of all time in the US, and is the only film in the top 10 which isn’t based on either a comic book, and young adult novel or a toy franchise.

A few factors counted towards its box office bonanza of a weekend, and that’s aside from the marketing department making sure that the movie’s stars – none more than Diesel – were showing their faces to help promote it.

It opened on a vast 10,500 screens in 63 countries around the world, a massive saturation of the marketplace, making it the third biggest foreign opening for a US film of all time.

Coupled with the huge fanbase for the movies, and the tragic story behind this latest instalment, it proved to be a perfect storm for the box office.

Paul Walker, who played Brian O'Conner in the muscle-car action series, died in a car accident as the movie was filming in Los Angeles.

His brothers Cody and Caleb were later used as stand-ins for scenes that had not yet been filmed.

But among the most interesting facts and figures surrounding the James Wan-directed actioner, is the demographics it’s played out to in US.

According to market data, 75% of the audience in the US were non-Caucasian.

“The importance of diversity of the ensemble cast in the Fast and Furious franchise has been an integral part of the success of the brand,” Rentrak box office analyst Paul Dergarabedian told The Hollywood Reporter.

“There is literally someone within the cast that is relatable on some level to nearly every moviegoer around the world, and this has paid big dividends at the box office and also in terms of how casting decisions will be made in the future for these types of large-scale action epics.”

“Someone that I admire quite a lot recently said this is a franchise that really looks like America, and there are characters that everyone can relate to. I think that’s a big plus,” Universal’s president of domestic distribution Nicholas Carpou added.

All in all, 'Fast & Furious 7’ has proved a wild success across the globe, and a fitting tribute to its late star.