Transformers does $36 million for Friday...

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen got a solid 28% Friday bump, starting out the Fri-Sun portion of its opening weekend with $36.7 million. In just three days (Wed-Fri), the truly terrible robot sequel has amassed a whopping $125.9 million. This will sadly place the movie at number four for the biggest three-days in history. Ahead of it are only The Dark Knight ($158.4 million), Spider-Man 3 ($151.1 million), Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($135.6 million), and just ahead of Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith ($124.2 million).

It's increasingly likely that Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen will come frighteningly close to the $200 million five-day total that it's been chasing. If it can pull in $36 million today, it will beat out Spider-Man 3's $161 million four-day gross for the second-highest four-day total of all time. Word of mouth is seemingly having little effect, even as everyone I've talked to seems to hate it as much as I did. Heck, the word is so lousy that Paramount has seemingly taken to sending out mass fake-Twitter blurbs raving about the film. At the very least, it will all but certainly end Sunday as the third of fourth-highest grossing film of 2009, behind Up and Star Trek, and possibly Monsters Vs. Aliens.

As front loading became more and more prevalent over the years, we've seen the 'quick kill blockbuster' reach bigger and bigger heights. We've gone, in 1994, from a $100 million+ blockbuster that no one liked (The Flintstones) to now, a likely $400 million+ blockbuster that no one actually enjoyed. What this means is that, as big as these numbers are, this really isn't much of a story in the grand scheme of things. When summer 2009 ends, people will be talking about Star Trek, Up, The Hangover, and a few others that open in the next two months (Bruno, Funny People, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, etc). This is not the first time that the summer champ was not the most-liked film. At the end of summer 2000, people were remembering not the box office champion Mission: Impossible 2, but rather Gladiator, Scary Movie, and X-Men.

Her Sister's Keeper, the official counter programming for the weekend, opened with about $5 million, so that's somewhat good news for the Nicholas Sparks-written, Cameron Diaz-starring weepie. Anyway, I'll talk about the other movies when the weekend numbers roll in. By tomorrow (if not today), Up will have surpassed Star Trek as the year's highest grossing movie (a title it will keep until Wednesday at the latest), and The Hangover will have surpassed There's Something About Mary. So there's that going for us. Sigh...

For a detailed analysis of the previous box office days for Transformers 2, go to the Wednesday report and the Thursday report at Mendelson's Memos.

Scott Mendelson