Box Office: ‘Angels and Demons’ in Dead Heat with ‘Trek’
Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on May 17, 2009

Well, it is not very often that I am bang-on with predictions, but that’s what happened this weekend. $48 million is the haul for Angels and Demons — definitely not a blockbuster in the USA, though the movie did haul in $100 million in international sales. So this movie did all right, I guess, but this wasn’t the kind of performance the folks over at Sony had hoped for. They had hoped for much bigger things. Someone may end up fired over this.
That’s the kind of silliness we are talking about here: folks. A summer-season movie makes $48 million and the knives start to come out in the press. Well, what do you expect? The summer season means high stakes and when your highly-touted movies miss out on the anticipated big gravy-train, even by just a little bit, people in Hollywood get a little crazy.
$43 million was the haul for Star Trek, which continues to roll right along. And the other movies pretty much did what they were predicted to do.
I don’t really have too much to say about this weekend’s results because the numbers really speak for themselves. Suffice it to say that the enthusiasm just wasn’t there for Angels and Demons to make it the kind of hit that The Da Vinci Code was. And we still do not have a $100 million blockbuster weekend yet. Do you think maybe next weekend will end the streak? Terminator: Salvation rolls out Thursday and Night at the Museum II rolls out Friday. Based on the reports and all the hype I fully expect Terminator: Salvation to clean up — but will it clean up enough to hit $100 million? Good question.
- Angels & Demons – $48,000,000
- Star Trek – $43,000,000
- X-Men Origins: Wolverine – $14,800,000
- Ghosts of Girlfriends Past – $6,860,000
- Obsessed – $4,550,000
- 17 Again – $3,400,000
- Monsters Vs. Aliens – $3,000,000
- The Soloist – $2,425,000
- Next Day Air – $2,281,000
- Earth (2009) – $1,680,000
So, until later this week when I preview what is sure to be a major battle at the box office, that’s it for now here at the Reject Report!
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