‘Transformers 3’ is down 40 percent from ‘2’

No doubt fueled by it’s juvenile cheap shots at Megan Fox (like Shia telling his parents he “moved on to something better” or one of the robots saying his last girlfriend was “mean”), ‘Transformers 3′ had the biggest opening day of 2011 and is doing incredibly well by any definition.

Unless you compare it to the opening day for ‘Transformers 2′, the one with Megan Fox, in which case it’s an embarrassing failure.

E! cites this list of the all time opening days on Box Office Mojo and says…

In its first full day in theaters, Transformers: Dark of the Moon grossed an estimated $37.3 million, good for sixth place on the list of all-time Wednesday openers.
But as you’ll notice, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is in second place, with a far bigger, far fatter $62 million debut.

And that’s despite the fact that 60 percent of ticket sales were for 3D, where average ticket prices are $10.85 and $14.85 for IMAX, as compared to the $7.50 they paid to see the second one.

It’s also despite the fact that ‘Dark of the Moon’ is actually pretty good. I’m as amazed as anyone but I liked it. The good news is they can still match the weekend total for ‘Revenge of the Fallen’, as long as they consider a weekend to be 17 days long.

(image source = splash)