Welcome to the most predictable weekend of the box office season thus far. With no major offerings from any studio coming out this weekend, unless you were particularly excited about Unforgettable for some deeply misguided reason, The Fate of the Furious is going to pick up its second weekend with no problem. As of Friday, the eighth (and worst) volume in the Fast and Furious franchise had brought in $11.2 million, with Unforgettable ($1.7 million) and Disney's Born in China ($1.6 million) representing the strongest showings from the new releases. One can comfortably expect a blowout here.

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Image via Disneynature

Unfortunately, the best of the new releases - Ben Wheatley's ludicrously fun Free Fire - is not doing very well on the big board, but considering its relatively low budget, it might very well recover by the end of all of this. Elsewhere, The Promise, a frustratingly dull movie about a severely important subject, brought in some $1.4 million, with a timid $4 million weekend in its sights, thanks largely to the appearance of Christian Bale and Oscar Isaac in the lead male roles. The Promise, Unforgettable, and Born in China each have a chance of cracking the top five, but it's unlikely that all three of them will land there by the time the Sunday numbers are all in.

Other than that, this will likely look like a duplicate from last week. The Boss Baby and Beauty and the Beast will still likely land in the second and third place, with Smurfs: The Lost Village and Going in Style battling it out with the newcomers for the fourth and fifth place respectively. That being said, considering how long Beauty and the Beast has been in theaters at this point, Unforgettable might eek out a third-place showing; they are both currently tracking for a $7 million weekend. Still, the story here is that The Fate of the Furious will own its second frame entirely, and if estimates are to be believed at this point, this weekend will end with F. Gary Gray's tone-deaf mess creeping past $900 million worldwide, aiming directly to cross $1 billion by the end of its stay in theaters. It's as true at the box office as anywhere else: people like what they know.

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Image via DreamWorks
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Image via Warner Bros.
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Image via Disney