Columbia Pictures; Industrial Light and Magic/Paramount Pictures Last weekend, Star Trek beat box-office projections. This weekend, can it beat Tom Hanks?
Probably not—emphasis on probably.
"I kind of have to give the edge to Angels & Demons," says box-office forecaster Paul Dergarabedian of Hollywood.com. "[But] it's gonna be tighter than anybody thought because of the legs that Star Trek has."
After its bigger-than-estimated opening weekend, Trek has sped to $100 million overall with fat midweek grosses.
Heading into its second weekend, Trek is still accounting for a big chunk of advance-ticket sales. As of yesterday, MovieTickets.com said Trek was its hottest ticket, accounting for 49 percent of business. At Fandango today, Angels & Demons held a slim, 4 percent edge over Trek. (E! Online and Fandango are both owned by Comcast.)
Dergarabedian figures Trek will gross around about $37.5 million Friday through Sunday, roughly half of its debut-weekend haul. (By comparison, ticket sales for X-Men Origin: Wolverine plunged nearly 70 percent in its second weekend.)
But as big as Trek may be, Angels & Demons—Hanks, Ron Howard, Dan Brown DNA and all—is expected to be bigger. (Although not bigger than its 2006 predecessor, The Da Vinci Code.) Dergarabedian pegs it for a $45-$50 million bow.
So for those keeping score at home, that's a projected finish of Angels & Demons, one, and Star Trek, two.
Wonder if Kirk knows how to work his Kobayashi Maru magic on the box office…