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Be nice to your Friday Box Office Analysis guy today. It's his birthday.

Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

Michael Bay's Transformers survives the two newcomers to remain on top of the box office Friday with $18.3 million. That's off 50% from last Friday, which is probably better than expected. What will be a recurring theme this weekend is that July 4th on a Saturday is a box office anti-holiday. The strongest day of the week will be kneecapped by many viewers opting for family time and/or fireworks rather than a trip to the movie theater. This likely boosted Friday a little bit but Transformers is in for a big drop on Saturday. There will be a slight recovery on Sunday, but it's miserable weekend multipliers all around. A second weekend of $46.5 million is in the works for the Transformers sequel.

Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs

The third entry in the Ice Age series took in $17 million on Friday after earning $25.1 million over its first two days. I normally think Wednesday openings are silly but not in this case. Children's films are the most likely to suffer on July 4th. Come on: fireworks or Ray Romano? Exactly. There is little use in comparing the previous two Ice Age films to Dawn of the Dinosaurs as they were March releases. But it should still have a successful first five days, Saturday notwithstanding. In fact, it's got a very good shot at being the top film for the weekend, should Saturday deflate less than expected and/or if Sunday rebounds higher. I'm coming up with a three day total of $45 million, and $70.1 million in five days.

Public Enemies

Johnny Depp's gangster film is well back of the Transformers/Ice Age race, with $10.1 million on Friday after $14.9 million on Wednesday and Thursday. This was pretty much where the project was going to end up the entire time. It just never jumped out as anything special so it's completely dependent on its stars (and with Depp and Christian Bale, you can do much worse) and word-of-mouth. The result is a entirely star power fueled $26.3 million for the weekend and $41.2 million in five days.

Projected Estimates for the Top Ten (Three-Day)
Projected Rank	Film	Estimated Gross
1	Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen	46.5
2	Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs	45.0
3	Public Enemies	26.3
4	The Proposal	13.0
5	The Hangover	12.1
6	Up	8.3
7	My Sister's Keeper	5.8
8	The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3	2.7
9	Year One	2.2
10	Star Trek	1.8