Weekend Box Office Estimates

Week two for Star Trek and the box office prospects are looking very good. As expected Angels & Demons took the top spot with $48 million but Star Trek nearly took the top spot with a take of $43 million. The result was only a 43% drop in sales, remarkable considering the summer movie competition. Wolverine, in its third week of release took a 44% drop to $14.8 million for the weekend putting it at $151.1 million total.

With a current US box office total of $147.6, the new Star Trek is now the highest grossing picture in franchise history and currently resides at 6th for attendance but that will change pretty quickly. Foriegn estimates add another $21 million from 57 markets bringing the global total to $216.

Looking at Rotten Tomatoes, the long term prospects remain solid as it appears that Angels & Demons and Wolverine are going to non-factors in the race to summer box office king. A&D has a critic rating of 38% (66% community rating), Wolverine has rating of 37% (65% community) and Star Trek remains high with 95% (88% community) so word of mouth will remain a factor and indicates repeat viewers. Suffice it to say Star Trek is going to have an excellent run at the box office proving that Paramount's gamble to move the film from Christmas to Summer release was a good one.

Next week Terminator Salvation and Night at the Museum 2 is out so Star Trek will probably drop a few places, but it looks like it has excellent chance to landing at third. At this point I have wonder if the movie will not top out at around $225 domestically. It is too early to tell but generally a hugely successful film has a total that is 50% US, 50% rest of the world so if that pattern holds, Trek has the potentially of crossing the $400million threshold in a few weeks.