Amazing Spider-Man sets Tuesday record with $35 million opening day. Six day weekend: $140m-$162m.

The Amazing Spider-Man ended up almost as amazing as Spider-Man 2 on the first day of its respective six-day Independence Day holiday weekend.  With $35 million per-Sony, it broke the record for the biggest Tuesday gross ever and the biggest Tuesday opening day ever (both held by Transformers, grossed $27 million over its first day ($4 million of that, or 11.4%, was from IMAX engagements).  But, as you recall, Transformers had $8.8 million worth of 8pm-12am sneak previews on Monday that year, giving the film a 1.25 day total of $36 million.  So Transformers needed 1.25 days to do what The Amazing Spider-Man did in 24 hours.  But The Amazing Spider-Man has 3D bumps and inflation to reckon with.  Inflation alone would put Transformers's opening 1.25 days at about $42 million, which is about what Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made ($43 million) on its first 1.25 days this time last year.  So it appears offhand that The Amazing Spider-Man will perform, in terms of weekend multipliers, somewhere between 4x and 4.6x its opening day number, or about what Transformers (4.3x - $155m/$36m), Transformers 3 (4.1x - $180m/$43m), Spider-Man 2 (4.5x - $180m/$40m), Hancock (4.6x - $112m/$24m), and Superman Returns (4.6x - $97m/$21m) did over their respective July 4th six-day "weekends". The outlier is War of the Worlds, which opened with $21 million on a Wednesday and made it to $112 million by Monday, a 5x weekend multiplier. As such, expect The Amazing Spider-Man to gross between $140 million and $162 million by Sunday night, with an off-chance of it earning as much as $175 million.

Scott Mendelson
 

It's the basics, stupid: Why Independence Day still holds up 15 years later.

I'm sorry if this makes you feel old.  But it's been fifteen years since Roland Emmerich and Dean Devlin blew up the White House with a giant flying saucer.  It's been fifteen years since Will Smith punched out an alien, exclaimed "Welcome to Earth!" and became the biggest movie star in the world.  It's been fifteen years since Bill Pullman gave what still ranks as one of the corniest and most shamelessly uplifting battle speeches in cinematic history.  Yes, tomorrow (July 2nd) marks the fifteenth-anniversary of the theatrical release of Independence Day.  And while many armchair pundits like to hold the film up as an example of when blockbuster filmmaking turned to shit (as they like to do with every single major blockbuster since Jaws), the truth is that it still works as the kind of old-school, character-driven fx-spectacular that seems in painful short supply these days.  The truth is that the film still feels like perhaps the biggest-scale adventure movie ever set on planet Earth.  But, take away the Super Bowl trailer, take away the box office records ($100 million in six days!), take away who did and who didn't become a star as a result of its success.  The fact remains that Independence Day still holds up because it's a damn good movie.