$13.5 Million Start for 'Star Trek Into Darkness'May 17, 2013 11:51 AM

by Daniel Garris

Paramount's Star Trek Into Darkness started out its domestic run with an opening day take of $13.54 million on Thursday (an estimated $2.0 million from Wednesday night IMAX showings are included within the reported figure). While Star Trek Into Darkness led the daily box office comfortably on Thursday, the film's opening day performance left a lot to be desired for a highly anticipated sequel of its size. With that said, it is extremely likely that the last minute release date change to Thursday took a toll on the film's box office potential yesterday, though to exactly what degree remains to be seen until Friday's performance plays out. In comparison, Thursday's performance for Star Trek Into Darkness was 46 percent softer than the $25.04 million opening Thursday take of 2008's Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and 1 percent stronger than the $13.37 million opening Thursday gross of 2009's Terminator Salvation.

Check back throughout the weekend for further updates on the box office progress of Star Trek Into Darkness.

In other box office news, Warner's The Great Gatsby continued its stronger than expected box office run on Thursday with a second place take of $3.43 million. The Baz Luhrmann directed film starring Leonardo DiCaprio was down 12 percent from Wednesday, which represented one of Thursday's stronger daily holds among wide releases. A bit surprisingly, The Great Gatsby has now topped Iron Man 3 at the daily box office for two consecutive days. However, Iron Man 3 should move back ahead in the rankings over the weekend due to the greater appeal of Iron Man 3 with family audiences. The Great Gatsby placed in second for the week with a seven-day start of $66.74 million. That places the film 75 percent ahead of the $38.14 million one-week start of last year's Dark Shadows.

Disney's Iron Man 3 placed in third with $3.297 million. In the process, Marvel's blockbuster superhero sequel surpassed the $300 million mark yesterday. Iron Man 3 reached the milestone on its fourteenth day of release (which ties it with 2009's Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen as the fourth fastest film ever to reach the $300 million mark). In addition, Iron Man 3 has now surpassed the $1 billion mark at the global box office with a current global haul of $1.0008 billion (current domestic and overseas totals stand at $301.89 million and $698.9 million respectively). Iron Man 3 was the week's top film with $89.47 million for the frame.  That represented a 58 percent decline from the film's opening week performance.