If you pay attention to the machinations of the entertainment industry--and my sympathies if you do--you will be inundated by breathless stories detailing the "record-shattering" opening weekend of Transformers. If you have even the most basic math abilities and a hint of common sense, you'll realize something's screwy.
The first "record" shattered is for biggest Tuesday gross. It made just shy of 28 million Tuesday alone, but what kind of a record is this? Most movies open of Friday, occasionally on Wedneday--never on Tuesday. It's easy to set the record for something that's not usually done.
More interestingly, though it has made something like 152 million so far, its weekend gross was only 68 million--nothing to sneeze at, but not a huge weekend number for such a heavily-hyped piece of merchandise. In other words, it made most of its money before the weekend--which would seem to suggest that, in the space of a week, many of the people who wanted to see it had already seen it.
I realize it's just Transformers. It's designed to be disposable summer entertainment. Fine. But Big Hollywood Movies have never been designed for more than entertainment value, yet they seemed to have a bit more shelf life once upon a time. Pirates Of the Caribbean 3 was supposed to be one the summer's smash hits, and had the huge opening numbers to prove it, but after only a month it's already faded into the mists of time. The studios thought this would be a record-breaking summer, but it's starting to seem more and more like The End.
