Three weeks in, The Fate Of The Furious continues to steamroll its competition, like a tank bursting out the back of a truck and plowing down the interstate, much to Ludicrous’ consternation. But that was probably always going to happen—in terms of wide releases, April has been more like an endless tarmac runway, with nothing of much significance standing in the way of Vin Diesel and the family’s massive ongoing success. The real news of the weekend’s box-office results is the big bucks made by two new films with subtitles, both catering at least partially to non-English-language demographics.
Right below The Fate Of The Furious, which repeated in first place with another $19.3 million and officially crossed $1 billion worldwide, was the lowbrow English-and-Spanish-language comedy How To Be A Latin Lover. Its $12 million debut in a little more than 1,100 theaters is the best bow ever for Pantelion Films, which specializes in movies aimed specifically at Latino audiences. (The studio’s previous opening-weekend record was $7.8 million for 2013’s Instructions Not Included.) Even more impressive, relatively speaking, was the $10.1 million Tollywood smash Baahubali 2: The Conclusion made in just 425 theaters—a finish that put it in third place nationwide, with an astonishing per-screen average of $23,855. It’s also the biggest U.S. opening ever for an Indian film, and further reason for The A.V. Club to feel pretty guilty about generally neglecting the country’s cinematic imports, which tend to open in America without any press screenings.
Returns were less rosy for the fourth place finisher, Dave Eggers adaptation The Circle. Despite the presence of Tom Hanks and Emma Watson, and the big sales of its source material, the film could only manage about $9 million. (Bad reviews and a truly dismal D+ CinemaScore from departing audiences surely didn’t help.) And it was a quiet debut for Sleight, the indie superhero movie that drummed up some $1.6 million on 565 screens, landing it outside the top ten. Perhaps audiences are saving their power-and-responsibility appetite for this week’s slightly more high-profile superhero movie, Guardians Of The Galaxy Vol. 2, which made about $100 million in a bunch of global markets over the weekend and which will probably at least double that gross by this time next Monday, after Marvel’s second most profitable band of bickering, mismatched titans has returned to U.S. theaters. Look for our review tomorrow. And Vin? Prepare to get bested by a tree-shaped version of yourself.
For more detailed numbers, visit Box Office Mojo.