'Night at the Museum' Hits $70 Million, Besting 'Terminator' Over the Four-Day

‘Night at the Museum’ Hits $70 Million, Besting ‘Terminator’ Over the Four-Day

May 25, 2009

By Brad Brevet

I don’t mind saying I would have predicted the two top spots at the box-office to be reversed as I fully expected Terminator Salvation to be a major hit, but Night at the Museum: Battle of the Smithsonian beat that prediction down with authority. Variety is now reporting four-day Memorial Day weekend estimates and has Museum hitting $70 million while Terminator managed a mere $53.8 million.

I would like to predict the success Museum found will carry over to next weekend, but I see a dramatic drop considering it will be facing another family friendly feature and this time it comes with a Pixar logo attached in the form of Up. Is there any chance the live-action sequel can compete with the 3-D animated juggernaut?

Forgetting the two movies at the top I remain impressed by Star Trek‘s performance as it only dropped 31% and pulled in another $29 million this four-day weekend bringing its domestic total to $191 million, just $2 million shy of Monsters vs. Aliens for the 2009 crown to this point. The steady nature of Star Trek is not at all surprising as I fully expected word-of-mouth to carry this film for a long time.

Angels and Demons made an extra $6 million on Memorial Day bringing its four-day total to $27.7 million and rounding out the top five was the spoof movie Dance Flick with $13.1 million.

Featured below are the complete four-day estimates, and if you would like to get in on predicting next weekend with the rest of our commenters click here and let us know how you think Drag Me to Hell and Up will perform against the current crop of competition.