Hollywood’s red-hot early summer continued this weekend, with two very different movies debuting in the 1-2 spots.
“Pitch Perfect 2” was on track to earn a “spectacular” $70.3 million in the North American cinemas this weekend, the best opening for any musical in Hollywood history, said movie analyst Paul Degarabedian at Rentrak.
The sequel took in more in its first three days than the original “Pitch Perfect” earned in its entire theatrical run, an unusual but not unprecedented event, Dergarabedian said. “They Spy Who Shagged Me” did the same thing to the original “Austin Powers” movie.
“Mad Max Fury Road” opened with $44.4 million domestically, in second place.
Degarabedian said the “Mad Max” reboot was aimed at men above 35 years of age, while “Pitch Perfect 2” was aimed at women younger than 25, “a pitch-perfect differentiation,” he said, “to assure that both found an audience with their expected target audience.”
Third place was held by “Avengers: Age of Ultron,” with a $38.8 million weekend and $372 million over three weeks of North American showings. That’s the best-selling movie of the year.
“Hot Pursuit” was fourth, with $5.8 million in its second weekend and nearly $25 million so far in North America.
And fifth place was held by “Furious 7” with a $3.6 million weekend and a $343.8 million in receipts over seven weeks.
Rounding out the 10 most-popular movies in the U.S. and Canada this weekend, as reported by the studios and collated by Rentrak, were “Paul Blart: Mall Cop” ($3.6 million), “The Age Of Adeline” ($3.2 million), “Home” ($2.7 million), “Ex Machina” ($2.1 million) and “Far From The Maddening Crowd” ($1.3 million).