By
John Young, July 4, 2011 7:38 a.m. EDT
Shia LeBeouf and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley star in "Transformers: Dark of the Moon," the year's best opening weekend flick.
Records, records everywhere. "Transformers: Dark of the Moon" collected $97.4 million this weekend (from Friday to Sunday), according to studio estimates. That's a significant result in three ways: 1. It's the largest opening weekend of the year, passing the $90.2 million debut of "Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides."
2. It's the biggest Independence Day weekend, opening beating $88.2 million from "Spider-Man 2."
3. It's the third-best July opening weekend, behind "The Dark Knight" and "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest."
Michael Bay's $195 million alien-robot threequel is projected to finish the four-day holiday weekend with $116 million, bringing its six-day cumulative total to $181 million.
But despite those enormous numbers, "Dark of the Moon" will likely never catch its predecessor "Revenge of the Fallen," at least domestically. By comparison, that 2009 sequel had earned a massive $214.9 million after six days. According to Paramount, 62% of "Moon's" audience was male and 55% younger than 25. Showings in 3-D continued to account for 60% of its gross, and IMAX screens single-handedly brought in an estimated $13.8 million over the four-day weekend.
Two other movies notched meaningful records.
On Saturday, "Disney's Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides" crossed $1 billion worldwide, becoming just the eighth film ever to do so. Despite being the weakest "Pirates" film domestically ($233.7 million through today), "On Stranger Tides" has pillaged an extraordinary $774 million overseas.
The only other movies to have earned more on foreign shores are "Avatar" and "Titanic."
And Universal's "Bridesmaids" is expected to pass "Sex and the City" today to become the highest-grossing R-rated female comedy ever. With $152.9 million through Sunday, "Bridesmaids" is also producer Judd Apatow's most successful movie.
As for the rest of the box office, "Cars 2" plunged a steep 62% for $25.1 million over the three-day weekend -- the largest second-weekend drop in Pixar history.
"Bad Teacher" earned $14.1 million for a 55% decline.
In fourth, the new Tom Hanks-Julia Roberts comedy "Larry Crowne" didn't make much of an impression with $13 million. According to Universal, 64% of the film's audience was female, and a whopping 81% was at least 35 years old.
And in fifth, the Selena Gomez comedy "Monte Carlo" debuted to $7.6 million.
'Transformers' Posts Year's Best Opening Weekend
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