Furious 7 breaks $1 billion barrier in just 17 days

Furious 7 has become the fastest film to take more than $1 billion worldwide.

The movie took just 17 days to break the $1 billion barrier, compared to 19 for Avengers and the final Harry Potter.

Furious 7, starring Vin Diesel and the late Paul Walker, has also topped the US box office for a third week with $29.1 million.

Paul Blart: Mall Cop 2, starring Kevin James, was second with $24 million.

The movie, which moved the shopping center policeman’s segway adventures to Las Vegas, was savaged by critics giving it a 0% score on aggregate reviews site Rotten Tomatoes.

Low-budget, social media-themed thriller Unfriended took third place over the weekend with $16 million – 16 times the film’s modest production budget.

It marks another success story for production company Blumfeld, which has already made the highly profitable but low budget movies The Purge, Ouija and The Boy Next Door.

Tom Hardy’s Soviet thriller Child 44 took just $600,000 across 510 cinemas.

With a budget of $50 million it means the film could be one of the year’s biggest flops.

Rounding out the weekend’s top five were Home with $10.3 million and The Longest Ride with $6.9 million.

According to box office tracker Rentrak and studio estimates, Furious 7 has already taken almost $300 million in the US and Canada alone.

A song from the Furious 7 soundtrack – Wiz Khalifa’s See You Again, featuring Charlie Puth – has also been breaking records.

See You Again got more Spotify streams in 24 hours than any other track in the US, and also topped the UK singles chart on Sunday as the fastest-selling single of 2015 so far.

North American box office Top 5:

1. Fast & Furious 7 – $29.1 million
2. Paul Blart: MallCop 2 – $24 million
3. Unfriended – $16 million
4. Home – $10.3 million
5. The Longest Ride – $6.9 million