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MONDAY AM: Paramount is reporting that Sunday’s grosses were down only 23%, or $21.2M, so that Star Trek ended the weekend with $79.3M.
SUNDAY AM: Official Paramount figures for Star Trek‘s North American grosses: Thursday Pre-Midnight $4M, Friday $26.8M, Saturday $27.4M, Sunday estimate $18.3M. (…The studio took $3M of Paramount’s $7M previously attributed to Thursday’s 7 PM-Midnight screenings and moved it to Friday’s take because the grosses were for 12:01 AM shows.)
Friday-Sunday $72.5M. Total Opening $76.5M. Star Trek passed Fast & Furious as the 2nd biggest opening of 2009 behind only X-Men Origins: Wolverine. Cinemascore was an A. Exit polls show that the audience was 60%/40% male-female, with 65%/35% over/under age 25.
Weekend Top 10
1. Star Trek (Paramount) OPENER [3,849 Theaters] Wkd $72.5M, Cume $76.5M
2. Wolverine (20th Century Fox) Week 2 [4,102] Wkd $27M (-68%), Cume $129.6M
3. Ghosts Girlfriends Past (WB) Week 2 [3,175] Wkd $10.4M (-32%), Cume $30.2M
4. Obsessed (Universal) Week 3 [2,602] Wkd $6.6M, Cume $56.2M
5. 17 Again (NL/Warner Bros) Week 4 [1,903] Wkd $4.4M, Cume $54.1M
6. Next Day Air (Summit) OPENER [1,138] Wkd $4M
7. The Soloist (DW/Paramount) Week 3 [2,090] Wkd $3.6M, Cume $23.5M
8. Monsters v Aliens (DWA/Paramount) Week 7 [2,185] Wkd $3.3M, Cume $186.8M
9. Earth (Disney) Week 3 [1,794] Wkd $2.4M, Cume $26M
10. Hannah Montana (Disney) Week 5 [2,301] Wkd $2.4M, Cume $74M
SATURDAY 10:30 PM: Sources tell me that Paramount’s Star Trek did $26M Saturday. That’s 9% more than the J.J. Abrams reboot made on Friday, which is a surprise and demonstrates that the pic is widening well beyond its rabid fanbase of Trekkies. I hear the studio is now confident the 3 1/2-weekend total on 3,849 theaters will reach $75M (which includes Thursday night’s $7M screenings and Sunday estimate of $18M). The 3-day weekend totals $68M.
Insiders tell me Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine added $11.6M Saturday, which was +40% from its $8.2M Friday, for a $28M second weekend. The movie will have made nearly $130 domestic in its first 10 days of release.
FRIDAY PM/SATURDAY AM: The North American opening for Paramount’s No. 1 Star Trek grosses Friday was $24 million from 3,849 theaters. So, adding in the $7M from Thursday 7 PM-Midnight screenings, the reimagined space odyssey has made $31 million so far. My studio insiders say the total weekend number now could easily reach $72M. “But it still has a shot at $75M if it gets any bump on Saturday,” an exec explains. To put that in perspective, a domestic weekend total under $50M would have meant the pic didn’t attract a new and younger audience and relied instead on the franchise’s older but loyal fanbase of Trekkies. It was risky for Paramount to market the movie as “not your father’s Star Trek”. But the critical reviews for JJ Abrams’ reboot are 96% positive.
I hear the studio is celebrating international figures already: how “it’s pretty spectacular” that Star Trek’s Friday debut in the UK, Australia, and Germany made almost the same as Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine’s in those territories last weekend. Star Trek opened day and date in 54 countries Friday, and the goal of this new pic was to finally attract more filmgoers overseas. ”Remember, this movie franchise has never done $100M international before,” an exec reminds me last night.
No. 2 was Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine which made $8.2 million Friday (-76% from a week ago) from 4,102 theaters for a projected $28M weekend and new cume of $131M. It crossed $200M today in worldwide grosses. No. 3 was New Line/Warner Bros’ Ghosts of Girlfriends Past with a $3.1M Friday (-46% from a week ago) from 3,175 theaters for an expected $10.5M weekend and new cume of $30.5M. No. 4 was Screen Gem/Sony’s Obsessed with $2M Friday from 2,602 theater for a predicted $6.5M weekend and new cume of $56M. No. 5 was Summit Entainment’s Next Day Air with only a $1.4M opening on the bottom end of expectations from 1,138 theaters for maybe a lousy $4.3M weekend.
FRIDAY 10:50 AM: Sources tell me that Thursday screenings starting at 7 PM, including midnight shows, made approximately $7 million for Star Trek. ”There was a big core fan turnout,” one of my insiders says, “so you can’t extrapolate to weekend numbers.” Nevertheless, it’s a great start. (Photo by Jim Stevenson of trekkies buying tickets at the Cinerama Dome in Hollywood.)
But there are still cautionary words around Hollywood that Star Trek could still wind up the next Watchmen (i.e. disappointing) because of the built-in fan base, the big presales, the Imax heat. I don’t get such talk. Way different movies, especially with JJ Abrams’ reboot garnering all those critical raves. As for today, expect early matinee numbers to be very high. But Hollywood won’t be able to get a real handle on Friday’s figures until the late afternoon or early evening. As for international where the reimagined Star Trek really needs to show strength to set it apart from the disappointing foreign takes of its predecessors, rival studios are telling me the overseas openings “weren’t that hot”. And, remember, Star Trek’s budget was $165M. Stay tuned.
Meanwhile, Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine will cross $200 million worldwide today as it starts its 2nd week in theaters — amazing. The global box office is on fire!
THURSDAY 2:45 PM: Now some of my box office gurus are upping their estimates, predicting Star Trek could do $75 million this weekend with $8M or even $9M tonight. That’s very aggressive.
THURSDAY 12:30 PM: Sure the tracking services are saying Star Trek will only make $50 million for the 3-day weekend. But even Paramount is convinced that JJ Abrams’ reboot of the TV/movie franchise will get up to $60M. And based on my reporting Hollywood generally is thinking at least $65M, not even counting the $5 million that could be generated starting at 7 PM tonight when Star Trek officially starts screening in selected areas around North America. There’s no doubt this is a difficult pic to gauge since it’s been 7 years since the last Star Trek actioner Nemesis hit theaters, and nearly 30 years after the first in the movie franchise Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and a lifetime from the original TV series aired 1966-1969.
Meanwhile, the reviews have been surprisingly and uniformly great with 90+% positive on RottenTomatoes.com even from the “cream of the crop” critics. Comparative films are other reboots like Batman Begins which opened to $48M on June 15, 2005, and Casino Royale which opened to $40.8M on November 17, 2006. Both reinventions of franchise films had trouble harnessing interest in the younger male segment at first and were strongly driven by older males. But Paramount’s strategy by opening today at 7 PM is that this will allow Trekkies to come out Thursday then go to work on Friday and tell people how much they liked it and thus allow word of mouth to spread into the weekend and boost the original $50M three-day estimate.
Let’s be frank. This new Star Trek is expected to do solidly, and maybe even spectacularly, in its 3,800 domestic theaters. But what really counts with this reboot is foreign. The pic is opening day and date in 54 countries this weekend, but some key markets are opening later: China on May 15th, Japan May 29th, Mexico June 5th. The fact is that Star Trek has done virtually bupkis overseas over the years because the scifi franchise never caught on. And Paramount has set out with JJ Abrams to change all that. I think that’s an achievable goal because the old Star Trek movies started “in the middle” so to speak, assuming that audiences knew all the backstory. But Abrams’ version smartly starts at the beginning so international audiences as well as young North American viewers can get on board from the beginning.
For more estimates listed by title, see box office results here...Editor-in-Chief Nikki Finke - tip her here.
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Went in thinking 45M-left thinking 100M. WOW!
Okay… I’m going to get shalacked for this…but…get ready for it….
$90million +
Why do I say this? Originally I was thinking 85, but im giving it an extra 5 because…
….Tyler Perry is in it. Trust me, i dislike the man’s work as much as the next guy but you can’t ignore his pull. If 1/4 of his loyal followers go see it because he’s in it. Extra $5million.
Let the Leland bashing begin.
Love,
-L
Ziggy, you are wrong.
This filml will Twitter on Friday night all over the continent and Saturday will be huge. Kids are smart enough nowadays to know when a film is good. They turned out for The Dark Knight, despite the shiteous films Warners made on Batman previously. They instinctively knew Transformers would be a blast, even if the last 30 minutes (after Steven Spielberg told Michael Bay “Okay enough character development, knock yourself out, kid”) is sound and fury claptrap. They smelled out Live Free or Die Hard which really WAS their daddy’s action series. They’ll come to this.
Just came home from the 7 pm IMAX version in my local theater.
Fucking awesome! Loved it, loved it, loved it! And I’m an old fart who watched the damn original series in the 60′s as a kid.
Like where it went, like the new concept and how they got there and will go see it again this weekend.
Loved Bones best – his take on McCoy was on point to the original work done by DeForest Kelley. Pegg as Scotty was great too.
JJ just have one question (it’s okay to call you JJ right? HA) – when’s the sequel start filming? I’m ready for the next installment!
For those who doubt that an archtypical “nerd” favourite can go mainstream, I have 2 words: DOCTOR WHO. Very much the UK equivalent of TREK (but with goofier aliens), WHO was relaunched a few years ago as a big-budget primetime series- and became the hottest thing on Brit TV, complete with the kinds of spin-offs CSI spawned at the peak of it’s popularity.(Only real difference is that, unlike J.J. Abrahms, the man behind the DOCTOR WHO revival- QUEER AS FOLK creator Russell Davies- is a lifetime fan of the series…)
Obviously, the commentators putting down the hardcore fans (like myself) simply don’t get that Trek was much more than Kirk, Spock and the gang. Hell, even Roddenberry thought it was folly to look back when given the chance to bring Trek back to TV. We loved the concepts, philosophy and the vision thing so much more than the trivia everyone associates Trekkies with. We DIDN’T want to look back with this film. We wanted to go forward, go beyond anything we’ve ever seen in the series yet.
And yeah, JJ truly proved what a hack he is with this film. He essentially took what he loved about Star Wars and ported it over to Trek, totally ignoring what gave Trek its soul. He did the one thing Trek fans always feared. He gave us Trek 90210, and all the witless fools raving about how good this movie probably will be first in line for Transformers and GI Joe, telling us how great going to the movies is once again.
For the record, the multi-plex I was at tonight was running it on multiple screens, and only one showing approached even being half-full. Every other aud in the place screening the film was less than that. Given what I saw, I was not surprised to see a midnight screening cancelled when I left.
I was in that same theater last year to witness the crowds for Iron Man, Indiana Jones and The Dark Knight, all of which played to capacity crowds on multiple screens from the very first showing. Even Sex & The City attracted bigger crowds than what I saw tonight.
As for the marketing geniuses at Paramount, it looks like a number of fans listened carefully when the ads told them this wasn’t their grandfather’s Trek. They decided JJ’s Drek wasn’t worth their money.
I’m not sure about the weekend box office, but I think ST’s longevity will surprise people, because, in my opinion, people are going to watch it, love it, rave about it and then bring their friends. I’m extremely excited to see this, but my friends and are waiting until next week because it’s not like we’re worried it’s going to disappear and we don’t want to have to deal with opening weekend insanity.
Wow, filmlover24/7, which film did you actually see? Did you see the special joke screening that Sasha Baron Cohen was running with a piece of shit version of the film? Because you certainly did not see the film I saw.
And by the way, as sad as this may come to a Trekii like yourself, the studio doesn’t really care if you like the film or not. You aren’t their audience anymore. They have a mainstream si-fi/action film. They don’t really need you. So go somewhere off into the corner and moan about the perversion of the sanctity of the original vision and watch them reel in all that money from mainstream audiences.
Shatner was right. Get a fucking life.
I am not a Trekkie. I never watched a full episode of Star Trek. I knew the characters because, well, everyone does. I saw thet movie tonight and thought it was top-notch. I think they will beat the estimates for the weekend. However, I think this movie is going to have a strong second week due to word of mouth and second viewings. Just watch.
WGAMember, relax, I think your member is about to explode? Are you still bitter over losing a job to a nerd?
Not all movies are for everybody, yeah, some people hated Titanic, imagine that, doesn’t mean that most of the world didn’t eat it up.
This girl has wings. Ziggy, Trek may forever be associated with the dweeb fringe but that “dweeb fringe” kept the franchise alive for decades.
It’s going to fly because the the jocks are going to hear the nerds say it’s really great… blow them off until one of them sees it and goes, “Oh, hell yeah!”
The people I saw in this flick were too young to have seen a Trek before that they knew and haven’t been polarized by SNL skits. Sorry, champ, but the younger generation doesn’t want to be defined by the older. If they find the inspiration in it, they’ll go.
Including Thursday, opening weekend probably under 100mil but it breaks 300m domestically.
I’m not a Trekkie. But I know the characters. And the main thing bringing me to this is JJ Abrams. Alias, Lost, Fringe, Mission Impossible 3 (the only good one) are reasons I am giving this a chance. The trailers look great. They look like they cast all the right folks. I’m getting to the theater tonight and I have never seen a Trek film.
A lot of people I know are doing the same. And the 90% on Rotten Tomatoes is a good thing.
To WGA Member – If the (lack of) crowds I saw yesterday for Star Trek at one of the most popular theatre chains in the area is any indication, I will be surprised if this puppy makes more than $50 mil. From all the raves I see here over a totally unoriginal story (where are all the critics who generally show up to bash this stuff?), I expected to see crowds equivalent to what you’d expect to see for one of the biggest blockbusters of the year. I would’ve agreed that Paramount did what they had to to get a mainstream audience, even at the cost of sacrificing the intelligence, heart and soul of the original. That may yet prove to be the case, but let’s see if the final result is due more to higher ticket prices and more theatre screens running this thing than – y’know – real demand by a larger number of people to see this.
exactly, exactly, exactly….
Saw it last night, although it has its problems plot wise, it gets the job done. The cast of the Enterprise were awesome. You actually cared about their plight. It’s just a straight up good time at the movies. It’ll do over 80. I’m definitely seeing it at least 2 more times.
Yeah, I guess people have decided to go for dumb popcorn. I was shocked how stupid I thought this was. Tons of action and fury that didn’t make any sense. Who knows, though, people gobbled up Transformers, which I thought was aweful, I’m sure this will attract an audience.
I am a hardcore Trekkie. It sounds to me as if the people who made the film have bought into the hype and don’t really understand the old show characters all that well.
Example: In the old show, Kirk was a shy, “stack of books with legs” when he was younger, not a womanizing hellraiser. And, whatever Roddenberry told people, the original Star Trek universe was a place where Kirk was at the mercy if meddlers from Starfleet, and the Federation was always one evil robot away from destruction. It was not a utopian universe.
But it sounds as if, in addition to writing a good script, the writers did a great job of getting themselves out of the continuity straightjacket. So, I think most fans will like the movie, even though the new version is a lot different from the old version.
As for the box office: my prediction is that the new movie will bring in about $60 million this weekend and about $150 million overall, but that, one way or another, it and the sequels will bring in the equivalent of an average of $20 million per year (in 2009 dollars), in various media, over the next 100 years. And maybe the REAL return is that some of the kids who see the movie will take math, science and engineering a little more seriously, and that some of those kids will grow up to make our future more like Star Trek and less like Soylent Green.
To whoever said that Star Trek 2 was the only really good Trek movie, I’d also offer that Star Trek 4 and Star Trek: First Contact (TNG movie with the Borg) were also very good. In fact, FC is the best of the TNG movies by far.
As a big Trek fan (Not a Trekkie though, I just enjoy sci-fi and the ideology of a future without poverty, disease, or war behind the Trek franchise…never owned a costume or pointy ears) I can’t wait to see this movie.
All I know is, my 15-year-old, who never took any interest in the original STAR TREK series, is fully revved up to see this movie. And I, who grew up with the original series, liked some of the eps, but was never a hardcore fan and do not view the old show scripts as Scripture, am totally intrigued to go with him and see what JJ has done.
So I think Par has a multi-generation crosscut proposition here, and doors will be blown off this weekend.
Are they folding in their 7pm on showings from last night (5pm at arclight in LA)? If so, it could be 90M for the weekend, although they can’t do that…but they may try.
SPOILER ALERT
A Spouse… of course the Kirk in this movie is different. Isn’t this supposed to be a different reality because things were changed by the Romulons? I could be wrong… but that’s what I got.
I liked it.
I think that Onion story needs to be posted every couple of links. I’ve always liked Trek but what’s amazing is that these hard cores with their complaints completely discount all the effort that went into actually being respectful (and mining from) all the existing films and material. They actually just want to feel betrayed at this point like it’s some defacto badge of honor. There is a ton here for the longtime fans and it is 100% accessible for everyone else too. The grousing is completely self serving.
One thing to consider about the Thursday numbers. I saw the movie last night and have told a few people today. Almost all of them said the same thing: “I thought it opened today.”
In fact, I would not know about it had I not seen a sign (very small one) at the movies last week saying there were shows on Thursday night.
Saw this at the local multiplex last night. On two screens for each showing, plenty of seats in both. I’m guessing $65+ million for the weekend, based on this info.
This is a summer popcorn movie, pure and simple. If you think about some of the story paradoxes to any degree, you’ll dislike the movie. As long as you have a bag of popcorn, and just go along for the ride, you’ll love this flick.
if your sources are correct and it’s overseas is soft then game over. par lost. too bad. looked like a good flick.
I’m old enough to remember the original series on TV and am not a hard core fan by any stretch of the imagination. I saw Star Trek last night and I can tell you this movie totally ROCKED! Each and every one of the actors did the old Star Trek proud. Special kudos to Chris Pine (Capt. Kirk) and Jeremy Sisto (Spock) and, of course, to JJ Abrams. This movie could have gone so wrong but it didn’t. It’s a wonderful prequel. May this franchise live long and prosper!