Hollywood may be on Operation Holiday Shutdown, but the town is still abuzz over some breaking bit of news over at Variety: Transformers has made some money. A whole bunch of it, actually. And inside sources at Dreamworks/Paramount are indicating that more money will be made throughout the week.
Debuting all over the country last night (July 2nd) at 8 PM, Michael Bay’s big fucking robots hauled in an estimated $8.8 million in an undisclosed number of theaters. The film "officially" opens today on 4,011 screens, but I guess it’s possible that theaters didn’t make use of every single print for these early showings; it’s either that, or Dreamworks/Paramount is trying to avoid acknowledging the fact that Pirates of the Caribbean 3: At World’s End outperformed Transformers by a cool $4 million with its own evening bow (it raked in $13 million on May 24th).
With Independence Day smack dab in the middle of the week, many people are essentially off from work until Monday, meaning that audiences won’t necessarily need to rush out and see Transformers today. For this reason, I’m actually expecting the official opening day number to be a little soft compared to those racked up by the May sequels; it’ll probably just see a steady stream of $20 million-plus days, which should get Transformers to $130 million by the end of the week. If I’m wrong, blame Dellamorte.
Interestingly, Ratatouille held very well on Monday with a $7.5 million take (Cars did $6.4 million on its first Monday), while Live Free or Die Hard managed a so-so $4.3 million.