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BOX OFFICE - USA - Friday 8th May 2009

2009-05-09 19:53:58

Friday saw a 19.9% decrease in box office revenue over the previous Friday.

The box office saw the welcome return of the longest running science-fiction franchise in history on Friday with the debut of the eleventh film in the series, STAR TREK, which took in an estimated $24M on its first day of release. Coupled with early screenings on Thursday night, the film has already earned an estimated $31M. Projecting forward, the film is looking at a potential $70M opening weekend. To put this in some perspective, the biggest opening for the film franchise was 1996's STAR TREK: FIRST CONTACT which earned $30M on its opening weekend ($52M in today's dollars). This is a massive win for distributor Paramount and the J.J. Abrams production team behind the movie as they have essentially rebooted the franchise, introduced it to a new audience, and made it a cool, blockbuster film that is up there with the big boys of the genre. And in one day, the new film has earned 75% of the total domestic gross of its predecessor STAR TREK: NEMESIS ($43M total). Word of mouth has been sensational on the new Star Trek so look for this one to stick around in the coming weeks in spite of the competition it faces in the next month.

X-MEN ORIGINS: WOLVERINE lands in second spot after its stellar opening last Friday, earning an estimated $8.5M and losing a whopping 75% of its audience. Word of mouth has definitely kicked in with this film, and this drop is a major disappointment. The film will obviously turn a profit but given STAR TREK has stolen its audience, this film is likely to dwindle away in the coming weeks, particularly with the remaining summer movies to be released over the next few months.

GHOSTS OF GIRLFRIENDS PAST actually held up pretty well on its second Friday, earning an estimated $3.1M and only dropping 46% from last Friday. Although the film did not open that big (thus limiting its chances of a big fall), this is still a reasonable result and may be an effect of counter-programming to the top 2 films.

Beyonce is still ticking along nicely with her quiet hit OBSESSED which earned another estimated $2M on Friday to take its total box office to $51.6M (against a $20M budget).

The same cannot be said for the only other new opener for Friday NEXT DAY AIR which landed in fifth spot with an estimated $1.4M. The film is likely to disappear given the scope of the competition it faces.

The remaining films in the Top 10 for Friday are: 17 AGAIN ($1.2M), THE SOLOIST ($0.9M), FIGHTING ($0.68M), MONSTERS VS ALIENS ($0.67M), and EARTH ($0.67M).

The North American box office took in an estimated total of $43.4 million for the whole of Friday 8th May 2009.

Click here for the original report on All About Movies.net
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