Box Office - 'Transformers' Back on Top Thursday

I still expect Transformers to ramp up its business over the Fourth of July weekend and fight back a fairly strong challenge from Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs. On Wednesday, the animated threequel topped Transformers on its opening day, but Revenge of the Fallen trailed by only a couple million bucks on its seventh day. The trend reversed on Thursday, and this is exactly why I don't see Ice Age taking the weekend. It was a close call - $11.5 million for fighting robots to $11.1 million for animated extinct species - but the Saturday Fourth of July hurts a family movie much more. Families are more inclined to take a few extra days off around the weekend than they are if the Fourth is on a Wednesday, which only affords them a couple days off. Transformers would have consistent business in either scenario, but Ice Age has been counting on the first two days because the business will be a little lower on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday than it would be on a non-holiday three-day weekend. Public Enemies is fading a bit, so I think its five-day is shaping up to be in the low forties, provided there's a little heat for it on Friday. It's not really a huge opening day movie, anyway, so it could be OK in that regard. Transformers is over $250 million in ten days, roughly $50 million behind the pace The Dark Knight was on last summer, but I think when we look back at this movie when it's all said and done, it's really going to be those astonishing first two days of business that will be truly memorable. The rest of the run is already looking like it will slow down pretty soon, dropping to 50% of its first five day total over the next seven days, but the damage has already been done, and it should be the first movie over $375 million since Dark Knight, and almost certainly the only movie this year that could make that claim.