Box Office - $68 Million for 'Up' Buys Lots of Balloons

Up scored the third-biggest weekend in Pixar history, with a very strong $68 million debut. It trails only Finding Nemo and The Incredibles, both of which opened with $70 million. Because Pixar movies tend to have long lives theatrically, gobbling up a greater percentage of cash than a typical summer flick after the opening weekend, this indicates that Up will make well over $200 million over its run this summer. It didn't face any direct new competition, although I can't help but think being tied to Up helped the also well-reviewed Drag Me to Hell, which was slow out of the gate. Up had the fourth strongest opening weekend of the year, and after this summer, it should still be a top six debut, at worst a top seven; there just aren't enough movies left with $200 million potential. Night at the Museum dropped to second place, with $25 million, and Terminator Salvation watched 62% of its audience from last weekend completely evaporate. With $16 million this weekend and a total of only $90 million so far, Terminator appears headed for a sub-$140 million summer. Drag Me to Hell finished in third place, where it would likely have always been, but the $16.6 million is substantially less than estimates. It might have a better hold than most horror movies, but it should have been over $20 million this weekend. Star Trek wrapped up May with $209 million, and we predicted it would be around $210 million at this point, on its way to $255 million. We do know now that it won't fall short of $230 million, so probably anywhere in between $245 and $255 seems quite possible now. The Top Five:
1 - Up ($68.2 million)
2 - Night at the Museum ($25.5 million)
3 - Drag Me to Hell ($16.6 million)
4 - Terminator Salvation ($16.1 million)
5 - Star Trek ($12.8 million)

Comments

[Evan. G.]

Unfortunately I think this weekends numbers for Terminator kind of signaled the end of the franchise as being a success into the future. It really needed to be huge out of the gate for a possible next installment to happen and with the audience rate dropping like that after only the second week things don't look good at all since its only at $90 million now.

I think the major problem is that as a time traveling franchise like it was for the first 3, the Terminator series was innovative. The story was complex enough to be something more than a straight action movie and everything worked. It was new and fresh. To save the future from the past dosen't seem that new but the first two terminators did it very well.

Now though that we are seeing the future for the whole movie its not as exciting or new for some reason. Terminator Salvation, though I did like it being a Terminator fan, for any one else just seems like the run of the mill sci-fi action flick. Terminators and robots in the future are nothing special at all, in the past they are, but in the future its just another action movie.

That's the problem. Plus Bale isn't that big of an audience draw and there were no other big stars who had power like Arnold did. Because of all that, the franchise needs some major re-tooling to make it new again or its dead.

[Julian Francis]

Plus, people wanted to see John Connor. Not Batman.

[Get The Big Picture]

The fifth one is supposed to go back to 2011, at least according to McG. I don't know if that would be a time travel movie (which this one wasn't) or if it's simply set in the past again. It is worth noting, though, that the third film did much better overseas than it did in the U.S., and that probably gave producers hope for the fourth one, even if it didn't clear whatever magic hurdle they had for its domestic returns.

I'm certain Warner Bros. won't be happy with where it's headed in the states. It won't even cover its production budget and then it probably had at least $75 million in marketing costs. The average is about $35 million, so my number is very conservative there. But with foreign receipts, DVD sales and rentals, subscriber services like HBO, and finally the cable and broadcast TV rights, it'll probably make close to $400, $500 million. So it won't lose money, but the margin isn't very good.