Movies With Butter

As one might expect, last week’s single release, one in a series of long-anticipated, high-budget summer releases—Star Trek Into Darkness—made it to the top of the box office charts on its opening weekend. It did not, however, quite live up to its high expectations for its opening-weekend revenues.

The film did very well in theaters, making over $70.5 million for a total of $84 million (since it came out in the middle of the week). However, it fell roughly $10 million short of its predicted weekend range; additionally, it didn’t do as well as the previous J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek, which made $75.2 million on its opening weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. Does the studio care? Probably not—they are still making tens of millions of dollars this weekend, regardless.

Star Trek Into Darkness did, however, manage to end Iron Man 3’s reign of terror—the holdout film made only $35.1 million over the weekend, adding to its titanic sum of $337 million so far. The Great Gatsby once again trailed Iron Man 3 in weekend revenues, making $23.4 million for a total of $90.1 million.

There is a significant gap in earnings between the summer releases and the other holdover films in theaters—the fourth-highest earnings, which went to Pain and Gain, totaled at $3.1 million, for cumulative revenues of over $46.5 million. Finally, after over two months in theaters, The Croods continues to pull in earnings that place them in the top five movies on the box office charts (even though they were briefly pushed down last week)—the film earned another $2.7 million, for an impressive total of $176.7 million (numbers from the Box Office Mojo weekend charts).

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