Box Office Report: Ben Stiller ‘Terminates’ Christian Bale Over 4 Day Weekend

With two big box office competitors this weekend only one could come out on top. In one corner was Ben Stiller who was returning with his family friendly sequel to 2006′s Night at the Museum. In the other corner was Christian Bale, who coming off a stint of bad press, is leading the Terminator reboot, Terminator Salvation. Both films were highly buzzed about. Both actors have big followings. But you have to leave it to the kids to dominate the weekend box office. Especially when it is a holiday weekend, families were hitting their local multiplex, and while some were checking out Terminator, most were waiting in line for Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian.

When the first Night at the Museum opened in December of 2006 it grossed $42.2 million over a four day holiday weekend. The sequel starring Ben Stiller easily topped the gross of it’s predecessor hitting $70 million over the Memorial Day Weekend. This is the highest opening weekend of Ben Stiller’s career and this pretty much guarantees us a third film in this very lucrative franchise. Like I said before, kids dominate the box office. Even if the film isn’t very good (Museum has an average 43% rating on Rotten Tomatoes) it still can make a killing. Another thing to note is the lack of kids movies currently out. The last high profile kid’s flick was Monsters VS. Aliens which was released back in March and currently stands as the highest grossing film so far this year.

On the other end of the box office spectrum was Terminator Salvation. Directed by McG, the Christian Bale, Sam Worthington action film is the first Terminator movie to hit theaters since Arnold brought us Terminator 3: Rise of the Machines back in 2003. T3 opened with a strong $44 million six years ago, and the fourth installment in the franchise opened with $53.8 million over the four day weekend. Since the movie opened on Thursday you can add an additional $13. 3 million to that tally bringing its’ total thus far to $67.2 million. The film has had mediocre reviews. It’s Rotten Tomatoes score is a weak 34%, and from what I hear the word of mouth has not been very positive.

The other wide release this weekend was Dance Flick which bombed with $13 million over the four day weekend. That’s all there really is to say about that…

So, how did my predictions hold up? Not too bad if I do say so myself. I was a little over the estimated totals which are being released but it was a tough weekend to predict because either Terminator or Museum could have easily taken the top spot. I originally predicted $78 million for Night at the Museum 2 ( it made $70 million) and my Terminator prediction was $72 million (it hit $67.2 million.)

The rest of the weekend box office looked like this:

Star Trek came in at number three with another small decline in it’s third week of release. J.J Abrams’ movie made another $29 million bringing its’ total to $191 million. The Star Trek reboot is days away from crossing Monsters VS. Aliens as the highest grossing movie of the year. Number four this weekend was last weekends champ Angels & Demons which fell only 40% with another $27.7 million this weekend. Number five went to Dance Flick and like I said earlier, nobody really cares.

This weekends box office was actually up 2% this weekend compared to last year when Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull made $126 million over Memorial Day weekend.

Next weekend we see the arrival of Pixar’s newest film Up. Check with us on Friday as we predict the weekend winner.

Source: Box Office Mojo