Paramount’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen powered its way to an amazing estimated total of $201.24 million over its first five days.  The new Transformers film, which has also earned an outstanding $187 million overseas, pushed the box office total a solid 9% over the same weekend last year when Pixar’s Wall-E debuted to $63 million. 

Transformers’ three-day total of $112 million is the seventh best 3-day opening of all time and the best ever for a film that didn’t open on Friday.  Its five-day total trails only The Dark Knight’s total of $203.8 million.  Its $60.6 million Wednesday opening, aided by $16 million in after midnight openings (see “Transformers Midnights Tops”), was the second biggest opening day ever, bested only by TDK’s $67.2 million.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): June 26-28, 2009

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen accomplished all these box office feats in spite of its two-and-one-half hour running time and a boatload of bad notices (only 21% of the reviews on Rotten Tomatoes were positive).  If nothing else Transformers 2 demonstrates once again that the critics really don’t matter with this sort of summer blockbuster, particularly when it is a sequel to a film that audiences really loved.  With its dynamic young starring duo, Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, returning, and a stellar multi-media marketing campaign, Transformers 2 was an unstoppable force at the box office. 

Just 54% of its opening weekend audience male versus 60% for the original film, indicating that the Transformers sequel actually demonstrated a broader appeal than its predecessor.  Certainly Megan Fox, who has now graced no fewer that 164 magazine covers, has become something of a cultural phenomenon (see “Transformers’ Megan Fox”).  Clearly she has no real contemporary peer in the “eye candy” department.

Paramount was very aggressive in predicting just a 15% Saturday to Sunday decline, so the real numbers, which will be available on Monday, may end up just under $200 million for five days, but don’t count on it, since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has outperformed everyone’s expectations so far.  The film’s take should naturally fall off in its sophomore session over the 3-day July 4th weekend, but with the dearth of tentpole releases in the middle of the summer season, Transformers 2 won’t face any real competition until Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince opens on July 15th.

The new Transformers movie’s boffo performance is good news for the property’s numerous tie-in products including IDW’s graphic novel movie adaptation and prequel, Activision’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen videogame, and the horde of new Hasbro Transformers toys.  In 2007, with their sales driven by the release of the first Transformers film, Transformers toys accounted for a full 13% of Hasbro’s yearly total, and this movie has three times as many robots as the first one including a new chief bad guy, Devastator, who is actually five bad guys rolled into one and whose complicated toy replica retails for a cool $99.

Meanwhile Sandra Bullock’s comedy, The Proposal, fell just 45% in its second weekend and finished in second place followed by another popular comedy The Hangover, which dropped just 35%, earning an estimated $17.2 million and bringing its cumulative to $183 million in just 4 weeks.  The Hangover, which was made for just $35 million, has now surpassed X-Men Origins: Wolverine, which cost an estimated $150 million, at the domestic box office.

Pixar’s Up, which finished at #4 in its 5th week of release, has now earned over $250 million, just $4 million behind the pace of Finding Nemo.  Up is now the highest-grossing film of 2009 so far, a distinction that it will likely lose to the new Transformers film well before next weekend.  Paramount’s Star Trek also remains strong, dropping just 35% and finishing at #8 in its eighth week of release.

On the other end of the success spectrum, Harold Ramis’ Year One with Jack Black and Michael Cera tumbled over 70% in its second weekend and the remake of The Taking of Pelham 123 fell 55% in its third.