Box Office - 'Ice Age' and 'Transformers' Tie

Sunday

05Jul2009

Box Office - 'Ice Age' and 'Transformers' Tie

Sunday, July 5, 2009 at 10:58AM

Something's gotta give in this back and forth box office race, but we'll have to wait until Monday afternoon to know for sure. Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs and Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen both made $42.5 million, according to the latest estimates, and both, you would have to say, underperformed to get there.

I don't remember the last tie at the top of the box office, and it's very unlikely that this will stay that way when all the tickets are counted, but $42 million for either one of these movies has to be considered something of a disappointment, even though it was a holiday weekend. Over the course of the five days, Ice Age has earned $67.5 million, which some analysts thought would be the three-day total.

Transformers, even if it gets the edge when the final results are tallied, probably won't have the legs to take a third weekend against the likes of Bruno. It's true that the holiday weekend took some of the starch out of its performance, losing 61% of its opening weekend audience, but even if it slips to 35% of this weekend's results (or roughly half of a $50 million weekend), Bruno would only have to gross $28 million to win, and Borat made over $26 million in its November 2006 debut.

The weekend's other new release, Public Enemies did almost exactly what we told it to do on Wednesday. Good boy. A $26 million weekend and a five-day total of $41 million is OK, but will it get to $100 million? It could, because there's not much that competes directly against it in July, kind of the same way Angels & Demons made over $80 million after its $46 million debut.

One other note: The Hangover becomes the most surprising $200 million live action movie since Wedding Crashers back in 2005, and it's the next film on Hangover's hit list. Another ten million dollars, which is more than likely, and The Hangover will be one of the top five rated R movies ever made. Any higher than number five - The Exorcist is number four with $232 million - seems improbable.

The Top Five:
1 - Ice Age ($14.5 million)
2 - Transformers ($11.5 million)
3 - Public Enemies ($11 million)
4 - The Proposal ($8 million)
5 - The Hangover ($7 million)

Colin Boyd |

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