Star Trek Dominates The Box Office
Star Trek raked in approximately $7M at the US box office on Thursday night and $24M on Friday giving J.J. Abrams’ new masterpiece an official ticket tally of $31M in it’s slightly stretched opening day.
Pundits speculate the strong first day opening will translate to an opening weekend box office haul of in the US of up to $75M, making it the most popular Star Trek movie in history. The previous film in the franchise (Star Trek: Nemesis) only managed to score $18.5M in its opening weekend and $43.3M in its entire US theatrical run.
Whilst the news was great for Paramount and J.J. Abrams it wasn’t so great for 20th Century Fox’s X-Men Origins: Wolverine which dived 76% from it’s takings a week before. Fortunately for Wolverine it has already earned $175M worldwide, $25M more than its budget.
Star Trek’s budget is estimated to be the same as Wolverine ($150M) however unlike Wolverine Paramount doesn’t have a big-budget competitor to worry about any time soon. In fact many pundits are speculating the film’s positive word of mouth will attract viewers over the coming weeks who wouldn’t typically head to the theater to see a Trek movie.
Source: THR
