Box Office: Confusingly Qualified Fucking Box Office Records Are Coming

It’s time to accept that Hollywood’s Fourth of July vacation is finally over and the rest of the summer awaits; try and put off daydreaming about your Labor Day hiatus long enough to review the US weekend box office numbers:

1. Transformers – $US67.6 million
In a summer that has numbed us with the relentless shattering of domestic, worldwide, and box office records, we finally have a milestone absurd enough to make us feel something again: With $US152.7 million, Transformers can lay claim to the Biggest Six-and-a-Half Day Weekend Overlapping A Midweek National Holiday Ever (For A Non-Sequel). We’ll ignore that relatively unimpressive $US67.6 million figure, as the traditional three-day frame is a relic of a quaint time before studios realised that the length of a “weekend” could be manipulated to suit their marketing purposes.2. Ratatouille – $US29.029 million
Ratatouille’s estimated $US109 million domestic gross following its first two weekends of release has already crushed the lifetime earnings of Paramount/DreamWorks’ Flushed Away, proving that American moviegoers are much more comfortable with the idea of animated rodents running amok in a restaurant kitchen then with the critters cavorting in human filth.

3. Live Free or Die Hard – $US17.4 million
Post-screening polling revealed that while audiences generally “enjoyed” Bruce Willis’ reprising of the iconic role of John McClane, they found themselves “confused” about why the grizzled NYC cop “didn’t shoot the annoying guy from the Mac commercials in the face” within the first five minutes of the movie.

4. Licence to Wed – $US10.4 million
To celebrate the utterly miraculous box office accomplishment represented by the critically savaged Licence to Wed passing the $US10 million mark in its first weekend, later today Warner Bros. employees will be treated to an ice cream social staffed by employees wearing gorilla suits and priest collars, a puckish homage to terrifyingly hirsute star Robin Williams.

5. Evan Almighty – $US8.114 million
Realising that the huge Christian audiences they so carefully courted are probably never going to show up, Universal executives feel it’s now safe to return to their public practice of Satanism.

• WEEKEND BOX OFFICE July 6-8, 2007 [Box Office Mojo]