After only two days at the box office, Michael Bay’s Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen has amassed a staggering $89.3 million. The scary part is neither day fell on a weekend.
After piling on $60.7 million on Wednesday including midnight screenings, the second go-around for Sam Witwicky, Optimus Prime and friends raked in an additional $28.6 million on Thursday. Friday’s numbers should surpass $30 million and push the domestic total well over $100 million after only three days.
Transformers 2 is ahead of the pace to surpass the $155.4 million Wednesday to Sunday five day opening record currently held by Spider-Man 2. The all-time five day record of $203.7 million held by The Dark Knight should remain intact barring a massive Transformers blitz in the weekend box office results.
While moviegoers flock like pilgrims to Transformers 2, critics at Rotten Tomatoes continue to dish out scathing reviews. The film currently ranks only 21% for a rotten rating and had been as low as 19% over the past couple days. In comparison, the original Transformers ranked 57%.
The draw of photorealistic giant alien robots is hard to resist, bad reviews or not. Transformers 2’s real test will be repeat business where the rash of harsh criticism may sink its overall box office potential well short of the big boys like Titanic and The Dark Knight.
