JJ Abrams‘ Star Trek exceeded the Sunday morning predictions, grossing $3 million more than expected. The Mother’s Day numbers elevated the film’s opening weekend box office to $79.2 million.
Vice-Chairman of Paramount Pictures Rob Moore says that “The spike over our initial estimates on Mother’s Day demonstrates that the combination of strong reviews and solid word-of-mouth contributed to better than anticipated attendance by families yesterday, confirming our belief that ‘Star Trek’ has a broad, multi-generational appeal.”
Also, IMAX has checked in, announcing that Trek made $9.6 million worldwide in IMAX over opening weekend. Trek grossed $8.5 million from 138 IMAX theatres domestically, a per screen average of approximately $62,000 for the weekend, marking the highest grossing Friday, Saturday and Sunday ever for an IMAX opening.
IMAX’s domestic opening contributed 11% of the hit film’s overall domestic box office gross of $79.2 million on less than 2% of the screens. The IMAX release also broke records internationally, generating more than $1.1 million from 25 IMAX screens, for a per screen average of $44,000.
In what’s said to be a standard four-year movie license, FX could pay Paramount as much as $24 million for the sci-fier – or about 12% of box office gross if it hits the $200 million threshold domestically.
“Star Trek” opened over the weekend with a three-day domestic gross of nearly $80 million.
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As is also standard, Par retains the rights to carve in an opportunity for broadcasters to secure a run or two of “Star Trek” during FX’s window.
“Star Trek” will start appearing on FX about 30 months from now — in time for the 2011 holiday season. That’s after the initial pay TV window, rights to which are held by burgeoning premium cable outfit Epix, co-owned by Par parent Viacom, MGM and Lionsgate.
FX likely outbid the other two major cable movie buyers, Turner and USA (which might have been a good fit for “Star Trek” given its soon-to-be renamed Sci Fi sibling). All three cablers have been aggressive on the movie acquisition front in recent years.
“Trek” reps the third spring/summer 2009 box office champ to be snapped up quickly by FX, which has previously secured the network rights to DreamWorks Animation’s “Monsters vs. Aliens” and 20th Century Fox’s “Wolverine.” FX also has the rights to another likely smash, “Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen.”
FX secured “Transformers” as part of another pact with Paramount, which earlier this year sold the cabler a slate of theatricals that included “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” “Cloverfield” and “Tropic Thunder.”
[Source] PR Newswire
