Never, ever underestimate the power of movies that appeal to every single type of audience. Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian is on track to score $70 million over the long Friday to Monday Memorial Day weekend. Terminator Salvation, meanwhile, will likely make $52 million over the same period and $65 million over five days (it opened on Thursday).
That’s somewhat better than Fox was expecting for Night at the Museum and a lot worse than Warner Bros. was hoping for Terminator Salvation, which some box office watchers had predicted would make upwards of $80 million over five days.
The reviews didn’t help: though buzz had actually been very good heading up to the film’s release, top critics and the Internet community both trashed Terminator Salvation. The director of the film, McG, has got to be feeling queasy right now: he’s spent the past six months talking up the movie as though it would be his breakthrough film on the level of James Cameron’s original Terminator in 1984.
For Fox and Warner Bros., it’s quite a reversal over last summer, when Fox couldn’t get anything to hit — its lineup included D.O.A. flicks like The Rocker, Space Chimps, and The X-Files: I Want to Believe — and Warner Bros., which was riding high with The Dark Knight and Sex in the City.
At least Warner Bros. has the surefire Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince coming up.
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