Update!

Transformers' Towering $201 Million

Sequel Revenge of Fallen scores estimated $112 million weekend, speeds to $201.2 million five-day take

By Joal Ryan Jun 28, 2009 11:45 PMTags
Transformers: Revenge of the FallenIndustrial Light and Magic/ DreamWorks Pictures

Giant robot movie, indeed.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will score $112 million over the weekend, Paramount Pictures estimated today, bringing the sequel's overall take to a towering $201.2 million.

If projections hold, the five-day gross will go down as the second largest in movie history behind only The Dark Knight, which sped to $203.8 million in the same time frame last summer.

It'll also neatly—and quickly—cover director Michael Bay's reputed $200 million production budget.

Revenge of the Fallen's Friday-Sunday performance gives Hollywood its first $100 million weekend winner of the year.

Here's how you make $201.2 million—fast:

You start off with a $60.6 million opening day. Follow it up with a $28.6 million Thursday, then romp through the weekend with a $36.8 million Friday, a $40.6 million Saturday and, if all goes according to projections, a $34.6 million Sunday.

Put it all together and…well, The Dark Knight still holds the records for opening-day, three-day, four-day and five-day grosses.

Revenge of the Fallen did, however, establish some records of its own: biggest opener of Bay's blockbuster-rich career; biggest opener of Shia LaBeouf's brief but blockbuster-rich career; biggest IMAX opening (169 screens) and biggest IMAX five-day gross ($14.4 million, topping Star Trek); biggest opener for a Transformers movie (Bay's 2007 original and the 1986 animated flick included); and biggest opener of the year for a movie with a, um, 20 percent rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Here's a look at the rest of the weekend competition, including the one film that Revenge of the Fallen didn't beat:

• Sandra Bullock's The Proposal ($18.5 million), last weekend's No. 1 film, got bumped down to second, but otherwise held up well. The movie's two-weekend take now stands at $69.1 million.

The $35 million The Hangover ($17.2 million) pushed its total to a staggering $183.2 million.

Up ($13 million) upped its overall take to $250.2 million, and floated past Star Trek as the year's top-grossing movie—a title it should lose shortly to Revenge of the Fallen.

• Cameron Diaz's My Sister's Keeper, which bravely marched into Transformers weekend with no giant robots of its own for defense, seemingly got buried with a fifth-place debut. But at $12 million, the cancer drama was as big, or bigger, than Diaz's other recent un-popcorn pictures, The Holiday and In Her Shoes.

And the award for First Iraq War Movie to Not Bomb goes to: Kathryn Bigelow's The Hurt Locker, which saw great reviews translate into a Revenge of the Fallen-besting per-screen average of $36,000. Overall, the movie grossed $144,000 at four theaters.

In its fourth weekend, Sam Mendes' Away We Go broke wider, if not technically wide, and cracked the Top 10 with $1.7 million.

In its fourth weekend, Will Ferrell's Land of the Lost ($1.1 million) averaged $760 per screen and dropped out of the Top 10. At the rate it's going now, it would have to play for nearly five more months to domestically match its reputed $100 million budget. Or, to put in another way: The odds on a Lidsville movie getting made just got very slim.

Eddie Murphy's Imagine That ($941,000, per Box Office Mojo) exits the Top 10 after only two weekends, and in the small-victories department, a bigger overall gross ($14.1 million) than Meet Dave ($11.8 million).

Here's a complete look at the weekend's top-grossing films based on Friday-Sunday estimates as compiled by Exhibitor Relations:

  1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, $112 million
  2. The Proposal, $18.5 million
  3. The Hangover, $17.2 million
  4. Up, $13 million
  5. My Sister's Keeper, $12 million
  6. Year One, $5.8 million
  7. The Taking of Pelham 123, $5.4 million
  8. Star Trek, $3.6 million
  9. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian, $3.5 million
  10. Away We Go, $1.7 million

(Originally published June 28, 2009, at 8:40 a.m. PT)