Autobots Enjoy the Fourth
What would happen if Hollywood couldn't sell a movie based on a hit toy line and cartoon series? We're not about to find out.
Transformers, based on the hit toy line and cartoon series, ruled the Fourth of July box office, with an estimated $29.1 million in holiday ticket sales alone, Exhibitor Relations said Thursday.
The Independence Day take was the biggest ever, besting the $21.9 million snared by Spider-Man 2 on the Fourth in 2004.
Add in Tuesday's estimated opening-day gross ($27.9 million—another record, for Tuesdays, anyway) and Monday night's estimated sneak-peak gross ($8.7 million), and the Michael Bay-directed extravaganza about the pitched battle of the Autobots and the Decepticons commanded $65.7 million in its first two days-plus.
The story line wasn't nearly as upbeat for the holiday's other new release, License to Wed. The Robin Williams comedy, costarring Mandy Moore and an Office-slumming John Krasinski, grossed, as it were, a combined $5 million on Tuesday and Wednesday, failing to upend last weekend's box-office stars, Ratatouille ($18.1 million) and Live Free or Die Hard ($10.5 million).
License to Wed was Transformers-esque in one regard: Its two-day take was on par with the $5.8 million grossed by the 1986 box-office dud, The Transformers: The Movie, per Internet Movie Database stats.
The new Transformers film is a big-ticket live-action adventure with CGI effects, as opposed to the old Transformers film's traditional animation. The only category where the Bay movie can't answer the old movie is in the casting department. Shia LaBeouf and Josh Duhamel may be hot properties, but they didn't direct, write, produce or star in Citizen Kane, as Transformers: The Movie voice-over actor Orson Welles did.
Holiday audiences didn't seem to miss Welles' baritone, though. According to a survey conducted by the ticket-service Fandango, 75 percent of Transformers-bound moviegoers were motivated to get it in gear because they watched the 1980s-concocted cartoon series as children, while 65 percent counted themselves as fans of the Hasbro toys. Only 16 percent said they wanted to see Transformers because it was directed by Bay. (Fandango and E! Online are both subsidiaries of Comcast.)
The Fandango poll also found that 73 percent of the movie's ticket buyers were male, a stunning stat to those who pegged the crash-'em-up robot saga as the summer's chick flick to beat.
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