Star Trek Into Darkness Weekend Box Office Softer Than Expected

will not have the largest opening weekend of any Star Trek movie ever made after all.The Friday-Sunday period is estimated to have brought in about $70.4 million this weekend in the U.S. according to estimates at Deadline–less than the $75.2 million that 2009’s Star Trek opened with.Of course, the movie’s opening was moved to Thursday at the last minute, and if you consider the Thursday box office numbers as well, the movie made $83.9 million in its first four days. This means that by any reasonable definition, it did indeed have the biggest opening weekend of any Star Trek film, but when you look at the cold, hard numbers a few years from now that’s not how it will appear on paper.It also fell far short of the expected $100 million opening that analysts had projected. Perhaps enthusiasm for the movie among audiences and a monster opening weekend for Iron Man 3 earlier this month gave them the impression that audiences were more motivated to get to the theaters than they really were.Iron Man 3 came in second place, as expected, with $35.5 million.At the international box office, Star Trek Into Darkness enjoyed a strong wide opening, making about $75 million in spite of the fact that it was competing with Fast & Furious 6 in the key U.K./Ireland market, where the muscle car movie made $13.8 million.