Weekend Report: Angels Keep Star Trek At Bay

by Furious
May 19th, 2009

It was a contentious battle for first place at the box office this weekend. The Hollywood big shots faced off against the scifi spectacle, with millions of dollars hanging in the balance.

Angels & Demons managed to hold off Star Trek and claim first place, pulling in $46,204,168. My prediction was only about $18 million high, but I’m not upset- it’s always good to get knocked down a peg after a string of successes. It was a little hard to know exactly what A&D was going to do because 1) The Da Vinci Code had a huge opening weekend and 2) it was the first big non-scifi movie in a couple weeks. Both of those factors made me think it could be a big weekend, but a lack of buzz and controversy hinted at an average weekend. Before I had adjusted my prediction, the calculated total was $42,741,461. Sometimes it’s best to have faith in the math.

Not being able to crack $50 million had to be a bit of a disappointment for Sony Pictures, but the movie also made $102 million overseas this weekend, for a grand total of $148 million, a hair short of the production budget. So even if the domestic totals disappoint, the movie is still going to make a lot of money.

Star Trek and it’s good word of mouth led to a $43 million weekend. That’s a drop of just 43% from last week, the smallest second week drop for a movie debuting at number one since Knowing back on March 27th. With a 10-day total of $147,645,384, Star Trek also has  the distinction of being the highest-grossing movie in the Star Trek pantheon, spanking Star Trek IV’s $109 million total.

Despite having a DVD release last Tuesday, Taken still managed almost $240,000 in theaters this weekend. It’s not a lot, but it works out to a per-theater average of $960 dollars, which is very respectable for a movie released all the way back on Super Bowl Weekend.

Monster vs Aliens had a fantastic weekend, dropping just over 2% from last week, actually averaging more per theater. Battle for Terra can seemingly do little right, managing to drop 79% this weekend for a $36,488 take. At least they can say it did better than Delgo.

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