Monday Morning Box Office Report: Star Trek Reborn

Posted by on May 11th, 2009   Filed under: Box Office
Source: IMDb

boxofficemay11_09

For the time being, it looks like comic book movies are still the hottest ticket going as J.J. Abrams’s Star Trek did not top the opening weekend numbers for X-Men Origins: Wolverine. However, the movie did still have an impressive $72.5 million opening (not counting another $4 million from Thursday screenings), which makes it the highest grossing Star Trek movie ever. (Star Trek: First Contact previously held the record, which was about $50 million after adjusting for inflation.) There’s no question that this reboot successfully located new life and new civilizations. Wolverine probably stole some of Trek’s business in its second weekend, taking in another $27 million, followed by Ghosts of Girlfriends Past with $10 mil. Next Day Air, on the other hand, had a dismal opening weekend with just $4 million earned on over 1000 screens.

1. Star Trek — $72.5M
2. X-Men Origins: Wolverine — $27M
3. Ghosts of Girlfriends Past — $10.4M
4. Obsessed — $6.6M
5. 17 Again — $4.41M
6. Next Day Air — $4M
7. The Soloist — $3.6M
8. Monsters vs Aliens — $3.38M
9. Earth — $2.49M
10. Hannah Montana: The Movie — $2.41M



  • That image of Spock above looks quite a lot like little Alia (the genius child) from David Lynch’s Dune.

  • 1138

    I’m torn by the number. Happy that it did well, though I was expecting a higher number perhaps even besting Wolverine. With word of mouth being bad for Wolverine, at least among my friends and forums on the Web, I thought Trek would absorb that audience enough to push it’s Box office past 80 million.

    But as I said I was torn by the number, since I still love the franchise but did not like movie. I hope Trek succeeds enough to warrant, not only a sequel but just a better movie.

    I still can’t accept the weakness in the story, dialogue and set design and overall poor direction given by JJ. He wasted a really great cast and Karl Urban performance that really would do Deforest Kelly proud. But I am of the few…very few he hold this opinion.

  • Agreed on Urban. Wow did he ever knock that out of the park!

  • Ken

    I wonder how many non-Star Trek fans actually went to see this movie. That may indicate the total domestic gross.

  • Ken, my guess is that 75% were non-Star Trek fans. And when I say non-Star Trek fans, I mean people who maybe saw a handful of Star Trek television episodes and/or saw 2 or 3 of the movies. There were a lot of people who saw the first Star Trek movie in 1979, and I would say 75% of those people were non-Star Trek fans. I have no factual basis for my estimate.

    About Urban’s performance, I agree that it was fantastic as well. It doesn’t seem like Abrams fine-tuned any of the performances. I think he told everyone to do his or her own take on the character and to forget about the actors who previously did the roles. Urban’s spot-on performance sort of seems out of step with the other performances.