'Night at the Museum' Hits $70 Million, Besting 'Terminator' Over the Four-Day
'Terminator' gets wiped out by over $16 million
I don't mind saying I would have predicted the two top spots at the box-office to be reversed as I fully expected Terminator Salvation to be a major hit, but Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian beat that prediction down with authority. Variety is now reporting four-day Memorial Day weekend estimates and has Museum hitting $70 million while Terminator managed a mere $53.8 million.
I would like to predict the success Museum found will carry over to next weekend, but I see a dramatic drop considering it will be facing another family friendly feature and this time it comes with a Pixar logo attached in the form of Up. Is there any chance the live-action sequel can compete with the 3-D animated juggernaut?
Forgetting the two movies at the top I remain impressed by Star Trek's performance as it only dropped 31% and pulled in another $29 million this four-day weekend bringing its domestic total to $191 million, just $2 million shy of Monsters vs. Aliens for the 2009 crown to this point. The steady nature of Star Trek is not at all surprising as I fully expected word-of-mouth to carry this film for a long time.
Angels and Demons made an extra $6 million on Memorial Day bringing its four-day total to $27.7 million and rounding out the top five was the spoof movie Dance Flick with $13.1 million.
Featured below are the complete four-day estimates, and if you would like to get in on predicting next weekend with the rest of our commenters click here and let us know how you think Drag Me to Hell and Up will perform against the current crop of competition.
- Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian (20th Century Fox) $70,000,000
- Terminator Salvation (Warner Bros.) $53,825,000
- Star Trek (Paramount) $29,400,000
- Angels and Demons (Sony) $27,700,000
- Dance Flick (Paramount) $13,100,000
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine (20th Century Fox) $10,100,000
- Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (Warner Bros.) $4,835,000
- Obsessed (Universal) $2,500,000
- Monsters vs. Aliens (Paramount) $1,900,000
- 17 Again (Warner Bros./New Line) $1,280,000
Links from Other Sites You May Like
Showing 18 Comments
~ PLEASE NOTE ~
If, in any way, your comment is an attack on the author of this post or a previous commenter, your comment will be deleted without question.
Add a New Comment |
Click to Read Our Commenting Rules & Guidelines
Perhaps Star Trek's seemingly endless legs can carry it to the top spot for the year?
I think once the final nos. are in tomorrow, NatM2 will be around 67mil or so. I think they overestimated it a little bit. Nevertheless, kudos for a good weekend. Up will be no. 1 next week by a mile. the battle will be for nos.2 and 3 between NatM2, Terminator Salvation, and Drag me to Hell
@Eric: Wouldn't that be a shocker?
@Raichu: I think you're probably right… something about that round number makes me doubt it. Also, I personally don't think Drag Me to Hell has much of a chance… I have no idea how to predict and haven't seen theater counts, but I wouldn't expect it to do better than $20m.
Night at the Museum 3, anyone?
Drag Me To Hell seems like it could be a half decent horror flick, but it seems there gunna be far to much competition on the board for it to make any real many, seems the key to the horror movies is realeseing them in more of the off season where for some reason even the worst of them have seem to make some decent cash this year.
i think the reason terminator perform so badly was pretty much the negative vibe around it from the critics, and i think rotten tomatoes went a little overboard 35% is a little excessively low, even for a action movie, they should see it for what it is, good summer action blockbuster, not some oscar worthy, soulful movie with a life altering messege. ive seen it, so have all my friends, and we all liked it, definitely not good as the first 2, but not as bad as people are making it seem.
@Brad Brevet: I think it has massive breakout potential. If all the horror crap this year can open over $20M, I see no reason why something like this (which is supposed to be good) can be bigger.
@Gophers Attack!: It sounds really pessimistic, but I think general audiences are more attracted to the "horror crap" than they are something potentially original. I don't think the name Sam Raimi carries much water with most people and I also think using "from the director of Spider-Man" isn't helping.
Laremy and I were discussing this one and he is with you, and used the numbers for Friday the 13th and Prom Night to argue for something like a $25 million opening. You both definitely have a solid argument, but I get more of a Dead Silence (2007) vibe from this one. Obviously, I could be way off and like I said, I have no box-office predicting talent, just a hunch. :)
@Gophers Attack!:
I agree. This is the exact release date/slot that "The Strangers", one of the most profitable movies of 2008 (made over 5x it's budget in domestic sales) had. It'll breakout for sure.
I really think it's worth noting that adding Thursday to T4's numbers result in an approx. gross of $67 million.
I know that the B.O. comparisons above are just Friday-Monday, but IMO, people that saw T4 on Thursday were ones that would have seen it over the weekend, but just went earlier.
So measuring $67M vs. $70M for NATM2 makes this matchup a lot closer, and accurately reflects that total number of people that saw it "Opening Weekend", no?
@Brad Brevet: You could be right. In general, good movies are shut out more often than bad ones. But with no horror film opening in two months (about as long until we will see another one open, too), I think DMTH will find success. Rami's name will help it somewhat- maybe not as much as other directors who are famous for scary movies, but it certainly cannot hurt it. It's also at 100% on RT with 15 reviews in. That has to mean something.
Personally, I couldn't care less about watching DMTH, unless I hear really good things about it. For me, this is an Up weekend and only an Up weekend.
Wouldn't DMTH been best served had it was held back and released this Oct? There's no Saw movie, and with it's Pg-13 and it being Halloween time and all, it would've had the box office landscape tilted in it's favor for an opening of, maybe, 40mil or more? Hope it finds some room this coming weekend. I think the ceiling will be 25mil for that one.
@JunJun: He JunJun, actually there is a Saw movie coming out on October 23 and with Halloween 2 at the end of August and Jennifer's Body in September. I agree with Vince and think Universal is trying to capitalize on the spot where The Strangers found success. I just disagree on what the outcome will be. :)
I think that the fact that Terminator flopped will help DMTH immensely. They're aimed at the same kind of demographics; young adults and teenagers. I'm predicting somewhere around $27 million for it.
@Brad: You forgot to add the fact that Terminator opened on Thursday, so its Thursday-Monday domestic total stands at $67 million. I find it amazing that T4's five day total couldn't even match Night at the Musuem II's 4 day total.
What do you think these numbers mean for the potential Terminator Trilogy that McG is intent on directing? Will the international numbers make up for the poor North American ones? Will there in fact be a McG-directed-T5?
I would love to hear your thoughts.
@Brad Brevet: Ooops, my mistake. I'm just hoping DmtH finds some room this weekend, but it'll be tough with all the Big Boys in the marketplace.
i can't believe terminator wasn't number one but i don't know if natm 2 is any good because i haven't seen it yet and have yet to be impressed by the trailers enough to see it but maybe up still has hope as the big kid movie of the summer we'll see
Many folks will now be interested in finding out more about Amelia Earhart. I'm almost tempted to say Amy should receive award nominations for her portrayal of Amelia.