Engaging Warp Drive
I was somewhat embarrassed that my initial prediction for Star Trek‘s opening weekend was far off the mark. Given the movie’s decent reviews however (95% on Rotten Tomatoes’ Tomatometer), I still believed that the movie would have better returns during its second weekend. Normally movies with positive reviews earn a higher gross at the box office, while also enduring a lower drop each weekend than movies that receive poor reviews; a full analysis about that in this posting.
This is what seems to be happening with Star Trek, as compared to X-Men Origins: Wolverine, released just a week earlier to less positive reviews (37% on the Tomatometer). Star Trek dropped 42% it second weekend while Wolverine dropped a steeper 69%. As a result, comparing a 10 day cumulative gross Star Trek has gone on to pass Wolverine.
It will be interesting to see how these two movies fare in the long run, and if they also manage to beat last year’s summer blockbusters, such as Iron Man which went on to become the second top grosser of 2008.
I wasn’t completely surprised that Star Trek didn’t make the $100M you predicted. While I saw the movie and thought it was incredible — hats off to JJ Abrams and team for doing such a good job of reinvigorating this franchise — I think the problem is that this franchise has a history that many people perceive to be uncool or link exclusively with , hate to use this word, geeks.
I’d also say that there’s been a trend towards superhero movies over the past few years that have become what viewers want to watch.