The Fate of the Furious doesn't even hit theaters until this weekend, but the movie is already breaking records... at least in China. News this week indicates that the upcoming eighth movie in the popular The Fast and the Furious franchise has already sold $18.1 million in presale ticket dollars, breaking a record that previously came together just this past January. The movie has also sold $2.4 million in IMAX sales, as well, breaking a second pre-sale record. This should ultimately end up being good news for The Fate of the Furious' sales in China and overall worldwide.
Tickets for The Fate of the Furious have been on sale since the beginning of April, first becoming available to people in China on April 2. In that time the movie has racked up quite a bit of moolah in advance ticket sales, with Ent Group trackers in China noting that this puts The Fate of the Furious ahead of Journey to the West: Demons Strike Back, which made pre-sale headlines back in January when it sold $14.1 million in tickets. As for the IMAX record, THR reports that the last movie to pull in so many early ticket sales was Captain America: Civil War, which did $1.4 million in presales in 2016. Obviously, the numbers The Fate of the Furious has wracked up so far are a bit more impressive.
The numbers make sense, considering how much The Fate of the Furious is expected to bring in during its first weekend at the box office. Predictions related to the new movie indicate that The Fate of the Furious will crush, and may even do better than Furious 7 at the box office. The current predictions say the movie will make somewhere between $375 million globally and $440 million globally during its first weekend at bat. For comparison, Furious 7 made $397 million worldwide during its first weekend back in 2015. The Chinese presale records help to prove that Fast 8 might actually beat its predecessor, and it's certainly racing to try.
Doubtless we'll be writing about plenty of box office wins in relation to The Fate of the Furious over the next few weeks. The new movie officially hits theaters in the US on April 14, and it's honestly coming at a good time, as Beauty and the Beast is starting to wind down and Smurfs: The Lost Village and Baby Boss are the current hits at the box office, and before Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2, among others, premiere.
There's been some reported beef between Vin Diesel and Dwayne Johnson leading into the latest movie, but if these early box office reports are any indication, there will be plenty more from The Fast and the Furious to come, with the ninth and 10th flick already announced. To take a look at what is heading into theaters in the near future, peruse our full 2017 movies schedule.
