After looking at the top money makers for Memorial Day weekend I got curious about how much more money is made on holiday weekends. After all so many high profile movies are released on holiday weekends; they must make significantly more money than the average weekend.

I complied the total weekend grosses posted at Box Office Mojo (for the top 12 movies each weekend) and counted only the grosses between Friday and Sunday for holiday weekends. This required some ratios and discounting for data before 2000 since those before then only four day grosses were available.

On average the big winner is Memorial Day weekend, making around 33% more on average than regular weekends. In second place was Martin Luther King weekend, with a 14% lead. What was most surprising was that Labor Day weekend made around 18% less than the regular weekend; perhaps people prefer going to barbecues their last summer weekend. President’s Day weekend was about even.

Perhaps most interesting is that during the last two years the grosses have dropped for Memorial Day weekend while they’ve gone up for Martin Luther King weekend. They also been rising somewhat for President’s Day. These are both indications that the theatrical release market is growing during the first quarter, and coupled with the fact that Hollywood does not release high budget movies in the first quarter, is possibly an opportunity.

This past Memorial Day weekend was surprising in more ways than one. Although the total U.S. box office take, at $221.8 million was slightly higher than last year’s $219.4 million, the top movie, Night At the Museum: Batle of the Smithsonian, had a total gross of $70 million, much lower than last year’s winner, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, which took in $126.9 million during the same weekend.

Utilizing the ticket sales information posted at The-Numbers.com I derived the average ticket prices between 1995 and 2009 and then ranked the 16 #1 Memorial Day weekend movies during those years according to tickets sold.

Pirates of the Carribean: At World’s End, from 2007 won both in terms of ticket sales and the total weekend gross. However in the second place ticket sales position stands a much older movie, The Lost World: Jurrasic Park, which was released over 10 years ago and denotes just how popular that movie really was. BTW, this year’s top movie, Night at the Museum 2, sold under 10 million tickets which places it in the #15 spot.