Universal’s Furious 7, the seventh installment in the studio’s 14-year-old franchise, set a new April box office record with an estimated $143.6 million 3-day total that absolutely blew away the $95 million total of the previous record holder, Captain America: The Winter Soldier.  Furious 7’s stellar debut powered the box office to a 31% gain over the same weekend last year when the second Captain America film opened, and it ranks ninth in domestic box office history, trailing just The Avengers, Iron Man 3, the Harry Potter finale, two installments of The Dark Knight and The Hunger Games, and Spider-Man 3.

Furious 7 also opened well overseas where it earned $240 million (and is yet to bow in China, Japan, and Russia) for an immense first weekend total of $384 million.  Furious 7 scored the third highest international debut ever, trailing just the Harry Potter finale and Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides.  While the series may be front-loaded, Furious 7 appears to be a lock to earn $1 billion worldwide.  The film’s domestic total is harder to peg, but it does have a shot to surpass American Sniper’s $346 million total, which is #1 for both 2014 and 2015 so far.

The spawn of a mature franchise, which has morphed from humble beginnings as street-racing "B" movies to star-studded international blockbusters, Furious 7 benefited from a number of factors including a solid 82% positive rating from review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the momentum created by the last two movies in the series, which added caper movie elements and even wilder (and ever more improbable) stunts to the franchise’s hyperkinetic “narratives,” and, unfortunately, the untimely death of Furious 7 star Paul Walker, whose last performance was fittingly in a film from the franchise that made him a star.

Furious 7 attracted an audience that was 51% male and 56% over 25.  Hispanics made up 37% of the crowd, followed by Caucasians (25%), African-Americans (24%), and Asians (10%).  They gave the film an "A" CinemaScore, which should help provide what has always been a front-loaded franchise with a modicum of "legs."  A lack of major competitors over the next three weeks should help as well--though international grosses will disappear when Avengers: Age of Ultron opens in numerous overseas markets on April 23.

Dreamworks’ Home, which topped the charts last week, fell 47% as it earned $27.4 million and brought its domestic total to $95.6 million.  Home’s drop was similar to that of Dreamworks’ Monsters vs. Aliens (45%), so there are no red flags here yet.

The R-rated Will Ferrell/Kevin Hart comedy Get Hard took a bigger shot from Furious 7’s mammoth debut as the buddy comedy slipped 62%, earning $13 million to bring its two-week total to $40 million.

In contrast, Disney’s live-action Cinderella slipped just 40% as it earned $10.3 million to bring its domestic total to $167.3 million.  Cinderella has now passed 50 Shades of Grey to become 2015’s highest-grossing film in the domestic market, a title that will short-lived as Furious 7 roars past it this week.

Also holding its own was The Divergent Series: Insurgent, which dropped 54% as it added $10 million bringing its domestic total to $103.4 million.  Insurgent trails the first film in the series here in North America by 13%, but should make up any domestic losses overseas.

The horror film sleeper It Follows is a critic’s darling, but it still hasn’t caught on with the masses, and having Furious 7 as a competitor for the teenage audience certainly doesn’t help.

The Weinstein Company’s The Woman in Gold, which stars Helen Mirren as a holocaust survivor who sues to reclaim a famous Gustav Klimt painting that was confiscated by the Nazis, got off to a solid start for an art film, earning $2 million from just 258 screens.

Be sure to check back here next week to see how Furious 7 fares in its second weekend.  The only new film opening wide is Fox’s adaptation of Nicholas Sparks’ The Longest Ride.