Even though Transformers 4 , also known as Age of Extinction , ruled the weekend box office with an estimated $100 million opening, that total is a little shy of what the second entry, Revenge of the Fallen , earned in 2009.
According to Box Office Mojo , Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen earned $108.9 million during its opening weekend and went on to gross $200 million within its first five days of release. Transformers 4 , which is now the highest opening film of 2014, will most likely not reach those numbers by its fifth day of release, but it will certainly win the top spot in its second weekend.
The three films being released over the Fourth of July weekend are Tammy , Earth to Echo , and Deliver Us from Evil , according to IMDb . It is unlikely that any of those films will beat Transformers 4 , though, even if it does have a massive drop in its second weekend of release.
Audiences dodged the poor critical reception that Transformers 4 received and the fact that the film is nearly three hours long. Variety reports that Transformers 4 opened on Friday with $41.6 million and had a little drop on Saturday, earning $32.1 million. $10.7 million of its opening weekend total came from the more than 350 IMAX theaters in which the film is playing.
Transformers 4 was also a hit overseas, earning an estimated $201.3 million, according to Box Office Mojo .
None of the other films came close to beating Transformers 4 this weekend. But there were some that had something notable happen while Transformers took in most of the crowd. 22 Jump Street came in second place with $15.4 million. In its third weekend of release, the comedy sequel earned a cumulative $140 million, surpassing the total earned by its predecessor in 2012.
While Transformers 4 was getting busy with bringing in $100 million in its opening weekend, two other summer films crossed the $200 million milestone. The Amazing Spider-Man 2 , which kicked off the summer season, just barely crossed the mark with $320,000 earned in its ninth week of release. Disney’s Maleficent hit $201.8 million, as it earned $8.2 million in fifth place.
In other box office news, How to Train Your Dragon 2 came in third with $13.1 million, bringing its total to $121.8 million. Last weekend’s number one film, Think Like A Man Too , dropped 64 percent to number four with $10.4 million.
In a related report from The Inquisitr , with the success of Transformers 4 , it is inevitable that Transformers 5 will be blasting its way to theaters soon. But producer Lorenzo di Bonaventura is saying that the fifth film doesn’t have a release date just yet.
“No, that’s not accurate,” di Bonaventura said. “Somehow that gets reported, it’s made up by somebody and then everybody thinks it’s true.”
He added that the Transformers films have been done “on different cycles,” and that will possibly happen for the fifth film.
“It’s an exhausting process to make these movies,” di Bonaventura said. “The scale of them is so enormous. It really does tax everybody and our tendency is to finish one at a time, recover, and then begin talking. And we’ll do the same thing this time.”
[Image credit: Paramount Pictures via ScreenCrush ]