Weekend Box Office: To $70 Million… and Beyond!

As this weekend proves, you don’t have to be a nerd to be a ‘Star Trek’ fan.

I’ve been waiting for the day that a ‘Star Trek’ movie opens north of $100 million. While early predictions made claims that we could see that happen this weekend, sadly, even with a fantastic sequel and the extra profit from 3D and IMAX showings, ‘Star Trek into Darkness‘ couldn’t pull it off.

Tony Stark and Jay Gatsby put up a strong fight, but J.J. Abrams’ second ‘Star Trek’ film pulled through. Playing on 3,868 screens across North America, ‘Darkness’ earned a healthy $70.5 million over the three-day weekend. $13.5 million of that came from its 336-screen IMAX release. If you include the totals from the Wednesday night IMAX-exclusive opening and Thursday’s wide release, Paramount has already earned $84 million domestically from the 12th motion picture in the ‘Trek’ series. Combined with the overseas totals, the film has already made $164.6 million.

To no one’s surprise, ‘Iron Man 3‘ finished in second place with a great $35.1 million. The Marvel movie has now earned $337 million domestically and $698.9 million overseas, pushing its worldwide haul well over the $1 billion milestone.

Baz Luhrmann’s ‘The Great Gatsby‘ also held over very well, adding $23.4 million to its $90.1 million domestic total. It has been said that ‘Gatsby’ actually upset ‘Star Trek’ overseas, but no numbers for the international debut have been announced.

After the #3 spot, the remainder of the Top 10 totals drop between $3.1 million and $1.1 million. There are no surprises found within those seven titles.

The only of the indie releases to have box office numbers announced (so far) is Noah Baumbach’s ‘Frances Ha‘. Co-written by Baumbach and star Greta Gerwig, the dry dramedy earned $134,000 from just four screens, giving it a per-screen average of $33,500.

Top 10:

1. ‘Star Trek into Darkness’ (Paramount) – $70,555,000

2. ‘Iron Man 3’ (Buena Vista) – $35,182,000

3. ‘The Great Gatsby’ (Warner Bros.) – $23,415,000

4. ‘Pain & Gain’ (Paramount) – $3,100,000

5. ‘The Croods’ (Fox) – $2,750,000

6. ’42’ (Warner Bros.) – $2,730,000

7. ‘Oblivion’ (Universal) – $2,222,000

8. ‘Mud’ (Roadside) – $2,160,000

9. ‘Peeples’ (Lionsgate) – $2,150,000

10. ‘The Big Wedding’ (Lionsgate) – $1,100,000

6 comments

  1. William Henley

    As this weekend proves, you don’t have to be a nerd to be a ‘Star Trek’ fan.

    Man, was that the truth. In my Saturday night showing, I was actually really surprised with the demographics of people in the auditorium – it was mostly young (as in 8-15 year old) girls, a bunch of parents, then maybe a a quarter of the auditorium was your typical geeks. I actually haven’t seen that many girls in a movie since Warm Bodies. IDK, maybe Chris Pine is a teenage heart-throb or something. I find it hard to believe that that many girls in that age group were Trekkies.

    • Your experience wasn’t on par with the national audience, though. According to BoxOfficeMojo.com, 64 percent of the North American audience this past weekend was male, and 73 percent were over 25 years of age. That’s a higher older male percentage than the 2009 film, which had a 60 percent male/65 percent over 25 ratio.

      Where Star Trek IS expanding its fan base this time out is overseas, though…so Paramount should be happy with that.

      • William Henley

        Those are the numbers that I expect to see, but I have to question where they get those numbers from. I rarely see the demographics at the theater that BoxOfficeMojo shows, and I doubt the ticket takers or the managers are taking the time to report demographics in their ticket sales. I guess you could take a sample of a few theaters, but sample groups can be misleading.

        I should also point out that I saw it at a Saturday evening show. The show came out Wednesday at midnight, and so had Thursday day, evening, and Friday day showings, and I am sure the demographics at those shows are going to be older crowds or fanboy (fangirl) crowds, as school hasn’t let out for the summer yet.

        This was also the 2D showing on their large-format screen (this theater refuses to show 3D flicks on the large format screen). This means that your crowd that wants to see it in 3D would have been in a different auditorium, your IMAX 3D crowd would have been at a different theater, and there are quite a few people who are at that theater every weekend watching whatever movie is being shown on the large-format screen.

        The 3D showing (on two screens, but MUCH smaller auditoriums) at this theater seemed to have a similar male / female spread, but it seemed to be more 25 and over.

        The theater is also in a young and extreamely wealthy part of town.

        Thursday morning I saw Gatsby (because I didn’t realize Star Trek was a Thursday release and had already bought my ticket for Saturday). That theater was in a cheaprer part of town. Gatsby was mostly 30 and 40 year olds in there, but across the hall was the 3D Star Trek, and it was mostly 30 and up white males – but that was an 11 AM showing. The 2D showing at the same theater seemed to be mostly 20 and up females and young children, and your retired crowd.

        That is why I am questioning if their sample group really accurately portrays real demographics. Out of the five screens I saw, only one seemed to hit the nation-wide demographics.

        • I believe studios use exit polling, in the same way they do during elections. Probably taken from those “Cinemascore” forms as well (I’ve never gotten one, but I’m assuming patrons in larger cities occasionally do).

          • William Henley

            Hmmm.

            I was discussing the demographics I saw with a co-worker today, and he said that, at least in this area, 12-16 year old girls are the majority of movie-goers, and will watch just about anything. Not sure if he was pulling from actual polls or just from observations, but with him having family in politics, news media, and high-brass military, I have learned to just trust him when he throws stuff out, as he is usually right. 🙂

      • William Henley

        BTW, though, many other movies (but not all) that I have seen at that one theater during that time frame seems to hit the target audiences. I have seen Warm Bodies, Oblivion, Bourne Legacy, Iron Man 3, and a few other movies there. Warm Bodies was mostly Teen and Preteen, Oblivion and Bourne were mostly 30 and over males, Iron Man was a pretty wide spread.

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