WEEKEND BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN: JULY 4-7, 2014

WEEKEND BOX OFFICE BREAKDOWN: JULY 4-7, 2014

~Matt Reed

Due to an extended 4^th of July weekend, I’m posting this a couple days late. On the upside, what are being broken down here are the actuals and not estimates. So there’s that!

After a controversial $100 mil domestic opening (read about the brouhaha here) TRANSFORMERS: AGE OF EXTINCTION held onto the top spot for the second week in a row adding another $37 mil to its take. After ten days, the Michael Bay helmed film has now earned $175.3 mil domestic. That’s well behind both REVENGE OF THE FALLEN ($293.3 mil) and DARK OF THE MOON ($261 mil) over the same period. It’s looking like the full theatrical run of AGE won’t even match FALLEN’s two week domestic take. As we’ve discussed before, however, the money is in international where it’s taken in a whopping $400.9 mil in just 10 days. It’s worldwide total now stands at $576.2 mil. It stands to reason that it will overtake X-MEN: DAYS OF FUTURE PAST (currently at $724.7 mil worldwide) as the #1 film of 2014 in short order.

The Melissa McCarthy comedy TAMMY opened with $21.5 mil, which was good enough for second place. That’s behind both THE HEAT ($39.1 mil) and IDENTITY THIEF ($34.5 mil). TAMMY’s five day $33.3 mil haul, as it opened on Wednesday, came closer to both but needed an extra two days to do so. It’s gotten middling to poor reviews with audiences giving it a C+ Cinemascore which doesn’t bode well for word-of-mouth. It should ultimately end up far south of either of her previous two films.

Rounding out a disappointing 4^th of July weekend (Box Office Mojo reports that it’s the lowest grossing 4^th weekend since 1999 and will guarantee that Summer 2014 will be among the lowest grossing in a decade) both DELIVER US FROM EVIL and EARTH TO ECHO bombed. DELIVER did anything but even for the low risk/high rewards of a summer horror film. It earned just $9.7 mil over three days and $15.2 mil over five. ECHO wasn’t able to capitalize on its targeted youth audience, mustering only $8.3 mil over three days and $13.5 mil over five. People seem to be getting tired of two things: possession movies (DELIVER) and “found footage” movies (ECHO). Both genres haven’t fared well over the last year and their bottom may have been found with these releases.

Nothing of import to report on with the rest of the top ten which all held surprising well over the holiday with the exception of THINK LIKE A MAN TOO.

Up Next: Just a single film in wide release, the sequel to the surprise 2011 hit RISE OF THE PLANET OF THE APES titled DAWN OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.

Here, as always, are the weekend domestic actuals courtesy of our friends at boxofficemojo.com: