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Furious 7 can go toe to toe at the box office with Marvel and Harry Potter

Vin Diesel in Furious 7
Vin Diesel in Furious 7
Vin Diesel in Furious 7
Universal
Alex Abad-Santos
Alex Abad-Santos is a senior correspondent who explains what society obsesses over, from Marvel and movies to fitness and skin care. He came to Vox in 2014. Prior to that, he worked at The Atlantic.

Getting into the same box office bracket as Harry Potter and The Avengers is a tremendous feat. Over this Easter weekend — a weekend that traditionally isn’t known for big movie openings — Furious 7 did just that, breaking a few records on the way.

The most impressive accomplishment of this hulking fireball of a movie was its global opening — the fourth largest in history, Variety reported. Furious 7 opened at $384 million worldwide, putting it in the same ballpark as The Avengers, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Part II), and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince:

That's absolutely huge. The movie also had the biggest April opening in the US on record ($143.6 million), and smashed the record for biggest Easter opening in history by an astounding $82 million.

My colleague Todd VanDerWerff has maintained that the Fast & Furious franchise might be the only comparable franchise to Marvel’s stable of cash monsters. These numbers prove it.

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