Weekend Box Office - TRANSFORMERS: REVENGE OF THE FALLEN Breaks $200 Million in its First Five Days
by Nicole Pedersen Posted:June 28th, 2009 at 10:42 am

In case you’ve been in a coma for the past week, the news has been all about director Michael Bay and his sequel to “Transformers”… oh yeah, and a couple of people died. The unexpected loss of Michael Jackson may have slowed “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” down on Thursday (Bay will have to blame that one-day drop of 53% on something) but Friday saw the film rebound with $36.7 million. That was good enough to snag the biggest non-opening Friday title and give the suits over at Paramount some hope that a strong weekend would propel the film past $200 million in its first five days - which is exactly how things went down. Saturday’s $40.6 million clinched an estimated weekend total of $112 million. That, plus the $89.2 million the film earned in its first two days, pushed “Transformers 2″ over $201 million as of Sunday - achingly close to the $203.7 million five-day record of “The Dark Knight”. More after the jump:
| Title | Weekend | Total | |
| 1 | Transformers 2 | $112,000,000 | $201,246,000 |
| 2 | The Proposal | $18,466,000 | $69,050,000 |
| 3 | The Hangover | $17,215,000 | $183,247,000 |
| 4 | Up | $13,046,000 | $250,218,000 |
| 5 | My Sister’s Keeper | $12.030,000 | $12,030,000 |
| 6 | Year One | $5,800,000 | $32,207,000 |
| 7 | Taking of Pelham 1 2 3 | $5,400,000 | $53,406,000 |
| 8 | Night at the Museum 2 | $3,500,000 | $163,248,000 |
| 9 | Star Trek | $3,606,000 | $246,225,000 |
| 10 | Away We Go | $1,678,000 | $4,056,000 |
Although it goes against every fiber of my being to compare “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” to “the Dark Knight”, the box office has spoken. Like it or not, these two films are now linked by their phenomenal five day tallies. While I covered “Knight” last summer I had the feeling that I was a part of something truly amazing - a once in a lifetime convergence of pop culture and critics, mass media and the plain masses. So to experience that same box office frenzy again (thanks to a film full of racist robots no less) just feels wrong. But that’s me.

As for the man behind the bots, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” is now easily the biggest film of Michael Bay’s career. This guarantees tha Bay will continue to bully and smash his way through theatres for years to come. Yay? The first “Transformers” brought in a total of $155 million in seven days - the sequel passed that mark by day four. Even with a reported budget of $200 million this is a giant win for Bay, Paramount and Hasbro. Only good taste loses in this scenario…
“Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen” also had a big week overseas. The film opened on Wednesday in almost every country around the world (Japan and the UK got to go a few days early, Italy and India had to wait) and it would appear that foreigners are no less immune to the charms of Megan Fox and robots. Numbers through Thursday gave “Transformers 2″ an additional $80 million in bragging rights (about all foreign grosses are worth after the complicated process of splitting them up and collecting them).
Shockingly enough there was one studio with stones enough to go up against “Transformers 2″ - Warner Brothers. In what probably felt like a shrewd counter-programming move, the studio put the Cameron Diaz/Abigail Breslin drama “My Sister’s Keeper” out in 2,606 theatres. Most estimates had the “feel-good weeper” finishing at $14 million and though “Keeper” ended up a bit under that figure, $12 million for a movie about kids with cancer, that’s still pretty good.
The numbers for the rest of the top ten were predictably lower thanks to the robot onslaught, but the grosses were not as lopsided as they could have been considering that many screens at the multiplex were given over entirely to “Transformers”. Last week’s winner “The Proposal” saw a 45% drop to $18.4 million, which was nowhere near as bad as it could have been. About as bad as it could have been was how bad it was for “Year One”. The ill-reviewed comedy fell a gigantic 70% to land at number six in only its second week.
Next weekend will tell how far those “Dark Knight” comparisons can be taken with “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen”. The debut of “Ice Age 3″ should take a bite out of the film’s ‘Parents with Frenzied Seven year-old Boy’ demographic, but probably not enough to matter at this point. As for the Johnny Depp/Christian Bale starrer “Public Enemies” - I hope Batman will be OK coming in third…


When i saw it i had feeling to cry .. mybe im greedy .. but why ?? we were too close.. its only 3 millions and we won );
i hope in next weeks we make total more than 600 million
You’re out of your mind, AD. The Dark Knight is ten times the movie Revenge Of The Fallen will ever be.
Nick ..
transformers is my best movie ever , so its normal that i want it to be the first ..
i know TDK is a legend but i still love transformers more than any movie
and when u love someting its normal to be out of your mind (:
so very happy that revenge of the fallen is doing so well, i hope it continues to do this well in time to come.
as for comparing transformers to the dark knight there is nothing to compare, they are totally different movies so its just personal taste. as for me transformers was way better than the dark knight.
another thing that angers me is the negativity towards this movie, its a great movie and its sickening to hear about the bogus flaws people THINK it has. obviously Nicole Pederson is one of those people.
nothing gets to me more than the frieking sensitive losers that think the ROBOTS are racist, thats just plain stupid. people are just WAY to sensitive these days and are looking for anything to complain about.
anyway im with you AD transformers Revenge of The Fallen is the greatest movie of all time!!!
AB, I suppose I can understand that. TDK, however, is my favorite film.
TDK one of my top movies but transformers is the prime of the movie
Okay CF and AB, you are freakin idiots. Transformers 2 sucked in everyway. I really wanted to leave in the middle I was so bored.The movie will NEVER make more than 400 million world wide. The dark knight made it’s billion because people loved it and it was well acted and well done. It continuesly made money, where as in three weeks transformers will be at the bottom of the box office because it was BLOW MY BRAINS OUT BORING
Kevin imho TDN was okay at best (the batman voice is laughable ), i could call you an idiot to but im not ignorant like that. Transformers 2 is at the top of my list.
kevin fuck urself mybe then u be able to undestand what is the big movie (: ..
alright kevin no need to call us idiots.
if you thought transformers was boring then you must be a little on the feminine side because that movie has everything a guy needs, cars, girls, robots, fighting, explosions, military vehicles, etc.
maybe you would be better off at a chick flick?
JB im right there with you on the dark knight, i thought the movie was pretty good it just felt a bit dragged out and batmans voice just gets plain comedic after a while
All these TDK fanpeople+ extremes are really starting to get a little ridiculous. News flash THE ONLY REASON MOST HAVE MADE TDK A MASTERFUL CLASSIC IS BECAUSE OF HEATH LEDGER AND HIS DEATH.
Was it a good fun movie sure, but if you’re going to tell me that Christian “I sound like I’m constipated as Batman” Bale is the holy grail of superhero movies. And that two little twin cars who are supposedly “racist”, ruined spectacular imagining of an 80’s cartoon based on toys. You need to put the mocha-latte-chino down and take a deep breath. It’s not that serious.
I also find it funny how everyone is harping on the Twins, but don’t say jack about Wheelie and his pseudo-italian gangster-ism “Friggin’ this” and “Friggin that” or Jetfire and his swashbuckling “Ahoy matey” dialect, or Ironhide and his Clint Eastwood, cowboy, redneck swagger?
Oh that’s right it’s because they’re not acting “ghetto”, “black”, “racist” or whatever other buzz word that people are using to try and put the film down based on how CGI cars act.
TDK box office record is probably going to be smashed when the numbers are revealed, and all you fanpeople need to stop holding it up as the greatest comic movie of all-time based on one dead guys performance. Please act your age, or at least your waste size!
i second that FunKrusher
QFT