This Memorial Day weekend known in Canada as “the weekend” (we had our holiday the previous weekend – Victoria Day) was a battle of the sequels with Terminator Salvation hoping to hold the weekend. Seems that the sequel Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian hedged out the Terminator sequel despite Terminator’s extra day.
From Thursday to Monday, Terminator has only managed $67 million. So now, even with a one day head start, it couldn’t do the kind of business Night at the Museum generated. Yep: $70 million in four days for Museum versus $67 million in five days for T4.
Now while some might see this as a defeat for Terminator, I don’t. With such poor reviews for the film buzzing around the net (not just here) I was surprised to see this hit at $67million. Remember that the much more hotly pursued Star Trek brought in an impressive $75m on its first week out, and finding a bad review for that movie was difficult.
In my books, this was as much of a win as we could hope for. Even in interviews McG has been saying that his three film plan will be completely dependent on the fans seeing this movie. No truer words were spoken. If they can’t make this a financial success, we likely wont see more Terminator stories. At least not with McG at the head.
But also folks, remember the squash.
NEVER underestimate the power of a family friendly film. I knew that no matter HOW big Terminator looked, it just wasn’t likely to out number the masses lining up for Battle at the Smithsonian. Seriously, they had Vader, a slap happy monkey and Amy Adams.
For those who think that Terminator would have done better if those families were not dragging their kids out on the holiday weekend, next weekend isn’t looking good either. Disney’s Up! is coming out.
