Surpassing expectations, Michael Bay’s Transformers easily looks to be the summer’s biggest non-sequel hit. Opening with late shows last Monday in hopes of taking advantage of Wednesday’s July 4th vacation day, the film drew a staggering $152,500,000, and a monstrous $38 thousand per venue ($17 thousand per theater over the weekend), in about six and a half days. As well, opening in limited markets overseas, the film reaped a worldwide cumulative take of $246 million or thereabouts during the same period.
Although its still a question of whether it will reap the sort of worldwide box office of Spider-Man (nearly $900 million) and Pirates 3 (over $900 million), in terms of sheer profitability the robots have one giant edge; a production budget about half of either of those films. Transformers cost a comparatively thrifty $145 million, compared to Spider-Man 3’s $260 million and Pirates 3’s mind-boggling $300 million.* Using the usual two-to-one ratio breakeven point, Transformers quite nearly has gone into the black in less than a week. Should it come within spitting distance of the sort of box office Spider-Man and Pirates reaped, Dream Works and Paramount are going to be very, very happy indeed.
(Not to mention Evan Almighty’s $175-200 million budget. That’s right, Transformers might well have cost only 75% of what Evan Almighty did.)
The film will face heavy competition, however, from the midweek release of the latest Harry Potter movie. Again, though, it’s pretty much locked in already as an extraordinarily lucrative film. Although Pirates 3 probably confirmed Johnny Depp to be quite possibly the biggest movie star in the world right now—really—the grand winner this year has to be young actor Shia LaBeouf, who headlined the rather more modest but still very successful Disturibia earlier this year, Transformers right now, and is next to appear in the currently in-production Indiana Jones movie. And with Transformers obviously set to become a franchise, he should have few career worries for quite some time.
Cooking up a savory $29 million, Pixar’s Ratatouille fell only 38% from its first weekend, a modest amount these days. Although its opening weekend take of about $50 million was considered modest, it stayed muscular throughout the entire week, and now approaches the $120 million mark.
As a comparison, Ratatouille was 22% behind Pixar’s last film, Cars, when comparing both film’s opening three day takes. At the ten day mark, however, it is only 6% behind. Presumably extremely good reviews and word of mouth have helped propel the film, although it certainly doesn’t look likely to scale the heights of such gargantuan money-makers as The Incredibles or Finding Nemo.
Drawing another $17.4 million, Live Free or Die Hard continues to look a modest success, with its profitability reliant on its overseas take. Make for a thrifty $110 million, it has drawn about $85 million in its first ten days. Look for it to get up to around $130 to $140 million in total domestic receipts. Still, the movie is going to have to make over overseas than it did here, although many action films do exactly that, so it looks likely to be a decent if not spectacular money-maker when all is said and done.
The dreadful looking License to Wed—seriously, who goes see Robin Williams’ ‘comedies’ at this point—didn’t have a prayer, drawing only $18 million in six days. Over the weekend it drew a soggy $3,800 per venue. Presuming a typically negligible overseas take for American comedies, things do not appear rosy for this one.
Still, its stink was covered up by the far huger stench emanating from Evan Almighty. You know, when I heard that it cost less than the Jim Carrey-starring, I thought they meant $25 or $50 million less than Evan’s official $175 million (and probable real $200 million) budget. But now, Bruce cost only $81 million dollars (!!!), meaning that Evan cost well over twice as much, and possibly $120 million more than Bruce did. Bruce was a very profitable film (worldwide take nearly $500 million), but its quite possible that Evan will lose so much that the studio will end up barely breaking even on the two, if that. To date, the film has drawn a lowly $82 million, with only $4 million of that coming from overseas. That means the studio has basically recouped only about $40-45 million so far on an investment definitely over $200 million, when you count advertising and prints and such.
Some smaller films continued to do well. Horror pic 1408 dipped only 33%, booking another $7 million for a solid $54 million so far. It’s basically in the black now, and should make a nice amount of coin on the home video shelf. Meanwhile, Knocked Up surpassed its director’s previous hit, The 40 Year-Old Virgin (starring Evan Almighty’s Steve Carell), drawing another $5 million for a $132 million total. The film cost only $30 million, and comedies typically do well in the aftermarket.
Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer looks to be a disappointment, and a regrettable screwing-up of what could have been a simply marvelous franchise. It made about $4 million, for a total of $123 million, domestic. The total worldwide take is a lame $200 million so far. DVD and TV rights will probably push this slightly into the black at some point, but this represents a very sad missed opportunity. Thank goodness the people behind Iron Man seem a lot more on the ball.
