Don’t let the name or the reviews or the robotic dinosaur fool you. The Transformers series is nowhere near extinct. Given the movie’s success this weekend, I think we can expect Transformers sequels until the end of the world. And who knows? Some critics think such sequels might, in fact, hurry it along.
Despite a 17% “freshness” rating from rottentomatoes.com, Transformers: Age of Extinction thundered to the biggest opening weekend of the year, transforming a 2-hour, 40-minute collection of CGI explosions into an estimated $100 million domestic payday (according to Box Office Mojo). It earned another $201 million internationally, too (including $90 million from China alone), bringing its one weekend total to more than $300 million. Clearly, Optimus Prime will be able to upgrade to WD-40 made with unicorn tears.
In the face of this mighty brand-name Transformer onslaught, everything else was a cheap North Korean knockoff by comparison. If you added the money made in theaters this weekend by every other movie, it still wouldn’t equal Transformers‘ take. Here, let me show you what I mean.
We find 22 Jump Street in second place with about $15.4 million—less than one-sixth of what the Michael Bay boomfest made. In third place was How to Train Your Dragon 2 with $13.1 million—just about one-eighth of Transformers‘ tally. And, of course, the totals continue to drop from there. Transformers didn’t just lap the competition: It was using a Lamborghini Veneno while everyone else was on bikes.
Think Like a Man Too, last week’s champ, experienced one of the most precipitous drops of the weekend. It lost nearly two-thirds of its audience and settled into fourth place with $10.4 million. Meanwhile, Maleficent continues to show strong week-after-week strength, collecting another $8.2 million to push its total domestic take north of $200 million. With this weekend’s earnings, Maleficent became the fourth biggest money-earner of 2014 (its $201.9 million pushing ahead of The Amazing Spider-Man 2′s $200.2 mil).
Final figures update: 1. Transformers: Age of Extinction, $100 million; 2. 22 Jump Street, $15.8 million; 3. How to Train Your Dragon 2, $13.2 million; 4. Think Like a Man Too, $10.3 million; 5. Maleficent, $8.4 million.
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