'Star Trek' Off to $7 Million Start on Thursday Night

Friday

08May2009

'Star Trek' Off to $7 Million Start on Thursday Night

Friday, May 8, 2009 at 1:31PM

It was a pretty good opening for a very good movie last night, with Star Trek making $7 million in its Thursday debut, according to Variety. Now, it's not a full day's worth of ticket sales, but it is more opportunities than Wolverine had in its midnight shows last week. That film made about $5 million overnight.

What does the $7 million mean? Not much on its own. But the overwhelmingly positive reaction to Star Trek could gain some traction in the next couple of days as a result. We predicted an $80 million opening weekend, which is well above what Paramount thinks it will make. Studios generally undersell those early expectations, which is odd considering how much money they want them to make in the long run.

Let's operate under the assumption that Trek makes about $20 million today, another $25 million on Saturday, and then $20 million more on Sunday. Those are just round numbers, but they don't need much support in my mind. That would give the new J.J. Abrams reboot $72 million over four days, so you can see if it does ten percent more business on Friday and Saturday, that's a $77 million weekend.

I think Saturday is the key day this weekend. The good reviews make it entirely possible that there's a lot of business headed its way, but what that ceiling will be is hard to say.

Colin Boyd |

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