Industrial Light and Magic / Paramount PicturesThe new Star Trek movie's opening day is nearer than you may think.
For those who note such things in their stardate calendars, May 7, not May 8, as long reported, will go down as the Enterprise restart's official opening day—or night, as it were, with (non-sneak) screenings kicking off nationwide around 7 p.m. Thursday.
Regardless of when the movie opens, the box office tracking firm Exhibitor Relations is calling for a $60 million-something Friday-Sunday debut weekend.
For a Star Trek movie, that gross would easily be a franchise record. For a summer movie, it'd be about $20 million or so off the pace of last weekend's X-Men Origins: Wolverine.
Not that Scotty's engineers should blow a gear over that last stat.
Exhibitor Relations' Chad Hartigan thinks Star Trek—good buzz, great reviews and all—can't be expected to keep up with a relatively young X-Men/Wolverine franchise. At least not right now.
"This is a reboot," Hartigan says of the J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek. "This is essentially the first film in a series that needs to earn that audience back."
With a $60 million or so debut, Star Trek would match up with two other high-profile reboots, Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins ($48.7 million in 2005) and Bryan Singer's Superman Returns ($52.5 million in 2006).
The Batman fellow, in particular, ended up doing all right.
____
Follow us on Twitter @eonline