July 4th weekend is said to be the best weekend of the year. It gives studios a whole 5 days of potential profit, as most adults are off work, and kids are usually out of school by then. This is usually a great time to release kid-friendly films, which is exactly what Fox did this year with Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs.
Last year, Hancock and Will Smith took over the weekend, grossing $66 million, and the first Transformers film had 2007 with$70 million. This year, Transformers 2 didn’t get the coveted weekend, but it still made top of the list in this years box office, grossing $239 million since last Wednesday. With poor reviews probably having something to do with it, Ice Age has already moved to this week’s number 1 spot, and grossed $14 million yesterday, where Transformers 2 only came in with $10 million.
Normally, when films make this much the first weekend, they don’t trickle down this quickly the next week, but seeing as how the movie wasn’t very good from a film standpoint, it’s not all that surprising. The big surprise, is how weak the opening day for Public Enemies was, only bringing in $8 million yesterday.
The reviews for that film have also been subpar, which is unfortunate considering the pedigree of actors and Michael Mann behind the camera. The estimated gross for Enemies this weekend is expected to be around $34 million by Sunday, while Ice Age is expected to bring in about $62 million, and Bay’s giant robots are expected to only bring in $50 mil.
