The original film was a bit of a sleeper hit at the box office, taking just over $100 million worldwide, but showing extremely long legs on DVD and home viewing.

Now, Pitch Perfect 2 has exceeded expectations and garnered a stunning $70 million bow at the American box-office in its opening weekend, beating the heavily fancied Mad Max: Fury Road - which took a strong $44.1 million.

Fury Road is rated 'R' which means less younger cinema goers would be eligible to go, but both films performed above expectation - with the Anna Kendrick starring sequel doing particularly strong business.

The film also topped the box office here in Ireland, taking a huge €536,811 in its opening weekend. Mad Max opened a day earlier and has a higher cume of €560,823 - but falls behind for the 3 day weekend. For a film with a production budget of less that $30 million (€26.4 million), these are excellent numbers all round. Max was a far pricier $150 million, but is getting extremely strong reviews. 

Elsewhere, El Machina, starring our own Domhnall Gleeson continued to do great business on a limited release and now has around $20 million in the register - not bad at all for a small budget science fiction flick with big ideas.