'Night at the Museum' Bests 'Terminator' at Friday Box-Office
Family beats geek genre in the holiday opening day
Photo: 20th Century Fox
After taking in $13.37 million on Thursday, including Wednesday midnight showings, Terminator Salvation was unable to hold down Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian on Friday as Variety reports the comedy took the first Friday of the Memorial Day frame with an estimated $15.3 million while Terminator followed with $14.9 million. Many box-office prognosticators expected a tight battle between the two films at the top of the list and even a few predicted Museum to come in first, and with numbers like this it is hard to think a dark brooding sci-fi will beat a family comedy over the rest of this holiday weekend.
The first Night at the Museum opened with only $30 million and that was before going on to earn over $574 million worldwide so there is no telling how high Battle of the Smithsonian will go with a three-day weekend that is likely to hit around $60+ million and then adding to that whatever it does on Memorial Day.
As for Terminator Salvation, it now sits at an estimated $28 million, including Thursday, and I am guessing will also hit in the $60 million range for the three-day making for a very tight race, but it may not live up to Warner Bros. studio expectations. However, Warner Bros. can be happy it will certainly take home more than the $44 million opening weekend of Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines. I would expect the final four-day (five-day for Terminator) grosses to end in the $70 millions for both films, lower end, if not high $60s for Terminator, and mid-$70s for Museum.
Between the two films Terminator has a better per-theater average as it was released in 3,530 theaters giving it a $4,205 per theater average while Museum opened in 4,096 theaters to the tune of $3,735 per theater.
The weekend's other new wide release was Paramount's spoof Dance Flick, which I have read many reviews actually say it has some laughs, yet it still only carries a 26% at RottenTomatoes. Then again, it isn't much worse than Terminator's 34% and Museum's 43%. Dance Flick went on to earn $3.9 million on Friday and will obviously not be a contender for the top spot with those other two heavyweights.
The complete list of Friday estimates are below. Laremy will be here on Sunday for the complete three-day recap and I will post an article on Monday with the complete holiday weekend results.
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian – $15.3 million
- Terminator Salvation – $14.9 million
- Angels & Demons – $6.0 million
- Star Trek – $5.7 million
- Dance Flick – $3.9 million
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine – $2.1 million
- Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – $1.1 million
- Obsessed – $575,000
- Monsters vs. Aliens – $280,000
- 17 Again – $270,000










