Re: Early Friday Estimates - Star Trek #4 - $6.3 million
In comparison yesterday was completely morbid while going to see Terminator. Standing in line I watched the audience exit the movie and no one was chatting about it and most of them looked like their dog had just died.
T4 seems to be making a lot of money for people to be exiting as if from a funeral. But always happy for anecdotal evidence of Trek's continued box office draw.
Be interesting to see the weekend figures...
I think that there's a factor in the T4 numbers that isn't being considered compared to Trek. Trek, much like Ep 1 of Star Wars is meant to be a family film. T4 clearly is not. Trek is a light hearted romp with minimal violence. You don't even see Nero actually kill the captain at the beginning. The closest you come to any actual violence in the movie is Sulu running the romulan through with his blade.
T4 is an adults only war film. It's dark... brooding and rather violent. As such, it loses 50% of it's audience to Night at the Museum, which took first place for the weekend.
That's neither good nor bad. I am simply saying that the audience for the two movies is entirely different and, if you're a parent you're likely NOT going to take anybody under the age of 13 to see T4. They may end up seeing it anyway, but it won't be their first inclination.
For the type of movie it is, T4 isn't doing badly and is on pace with T3, which made $44m over it's first 3 days while T4 made $43m.
Keep in mind that T3 cost the same $200m to make and only made about $150m domestic but ended up grossing over $433m worldwide, not adjusted for inflation. Trek will do nowhere near that kind of number overseas and, if T4 follows suit with T3 in overseas popularity will probably end up grossing more at the end of the day. Of course, Arnold may have more popularity overseas than Bale, so, it's hard to say.
I'm simply saying that it's two different franchises with two different audiences. Other than both being considered sci-fi, they have very little in common.
According to
Deadlinehollywood analysts predict the 4-day holiday weekend numbers might look something like this:
1. Night at the Museum 2 - 70 million
2. Terminator 4 - 70-80 million (5 days)
3. Da Vinci Code 2 - 30 million
4. Star Trek XI - 30 million
Just estimates folks.
Night at the museum ends up being a bit of a stumper for T4 as, like I said earlier, a lot of younger folks see that instead. If Museum debuts a week or two later, no telling where those viewers go, assuming they don't see more than one film over the weekend.
Terminator had a full release on the Wednesday/Thursday didn't it? Trek had limited showings.
Thursday. Yeah, I believe it was a full day release. But, being a weekday it's reasonable to think that most of their money comes after 6pm, just like on Friday's.
Again, no point to my post other than to say that T4 isn't doing badly and is on pace with T3. The international numbers will be far more telling for T4 as that's where T3 made the bulk of it's money.