A pitiful showing at the box office over the Fourth of July weekend all but guarantees that this is going to be one of the poorest-performing summer seasons in recent Hollywood history.  Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction easily topped the weekend with an estimated $36.4 million, but had little help from either newcomers or holdovers as the total of the top 12 films was down a staggering 46.6% from the Fourth of July weekend last year.  After building a solid edge over 2013’s record box office total during the first five months of the year, box office totals were down 16% in June, which coupled with a smaller decline in May, put Tinseltown’s total for 2014 down 1.5% heading into July.
 
Michael Bay’s Transformers: Age of Extinction dropped 64% in its second weekend as the $210 million blockbuster ran its domestic total to $174.7 million.  It is difficult to say exactly how this total compares with the 3 previous Transformers films since none of them opened on a Friday, but by any calculation it is clearly the worst performer in the franchise on the domestic front by at least 15%.  Of course this sort of "franchise fatigue" has become par for the course on the domestic front, and Transformers, like many another blockbusters (ASM 2, etc.) is more than making up for its domestic deficiencies overseas where it has topped $400 million already.  Depending on the success of Dawn of Planet of the Apes, which opens next weekend, Transformers 4 appears unlikely to surpass $250 million on the domestic front, though its enormous foreign earnings give it the inside track at becoming the top-grossing film of this summer season.  However a strong showing by DoPota or Marvel’s Guardians of the Galaxy could potentially put a dark horse in first place in the summer box office derby.
 
Second place this weekend went to the Melissa McCarthy vehicle Tammy, which earned $21.2 million for the three-day weekend.  Directed by McCarthy’s husband Ben Falcone, Tammy is a road-trip comedy that is more of a character study than the kind of "R" rated bawdy farce (Bridesmaids, Identity Thief, The Heat) that has made McCarthy a major comedy star.  Suffice it to say that Tammy, which received a poor "C+" CinemaScore from opening weekend audiences, is no threat to 22 Jump Street, which is on track to become the top "R" rated comedy of the summer.
 
Sony’s Deliver Us From Evil, is one of the first horror films of 2014 to come from a major studio, but it opened weakly with just $9.5 million over the 3-day weekend.  Scott Derrickson, who parlayed his minor in theology into a horror movie career with The Exorcism of Emily Rose, returned to his favorite theme of demonic possession in Deliver From Evil, a "R" rated police procedural/horror film mash-up that pairs a New York Cop (Eric Bana) with a renegade priest (Edgar Ramirez) to battle a series a demonic possessions in the five boroughs.  Derrickson is of particular interest to geek viewers since Marvel Studios, obviously impressed with the director’s grasp of the supernatural, has tapped Derrickson to helm its Doctor Strange movie (see "'Doctor Strange' Director Set").  Deliver Us From Evil’s less-than-stellar debut just might have the powers at Marvel feeling a little queasy, though the movie did earn an "OK" CinemaScore of "B+" from its opening weekend audience, which was 51% male and 51% over 25.

Weekend Box Office (Studio Estimates): July 4-6, 2014
	Film	Weekend Gross	Screens	Avg./ Screen	Total Gross	Wk#
1	Transformers: Age of Extinction	$36,400,000	4,233	$8,599	$174,746,000	2
2	Tammy	$21,170,000	3,465	$6,110	$32,906,000	1
3	Deliver Us From Evil	$9,500,000	3,049	$3,116	$15,000,000	1
4	22 Jump Street	$9,400,000	3,324	$2,828	$158,854,000	4
5	How to Train Your Dragon 2	$8,750,000	3,297	$2,654	$140,000,000	4
6	Earth to Echo	$8,250,000	3,230	$2,554	$13,500,000	1
7	Maleficent	$6,133,000	2,389	$2,567	$213,882,000	6
8	Jersey Boys	$5,160,000	2,630	$1,962	$36,705,000	3
9	Think Like a Man Too	$4,900,000	1,729	$2,834	$57,192,000	3
10	Edge of Tomorrow	$3,640,000	1,538	$2,367	$90,870,000	5

The "R" rated comedy 22 Jump Street dropped 40.7%, but still managed to add $9.4 million and bring its domestic total to $159 million, surpassing the Seth Rogen comedy Neighbors to become the highest-grossing "R" rated comedy of the summer so far.
 
Dreamworks’ How to Train Your Dragon 2 had a predictably good Fourth of July session, dropping just 34% as it added $8.7 million to bring its domestic total to $140 million. 
 
The Dreamworks animated feature had competition for its target family audience from the live-action low-budget Earth to Echo, an updated, kid-friendly ET-like space alien movie that Disney developed and then sold to Relativity Media for $13 million. 
 
Disney’s Maleficent, which originally was supposed to open over the Fourth of July, remained a strong performer as it added $6.1 million bringing its domestic total to an impressive $213.8 million, which is within hailing distance of X-Men: Days of Future Past’s summer-leading total of $227 million.
 
The Tom Cruise science fiction film Edge of Tomorrow, which is based on the Japanese light novel/manga series All You Need Is Kill, fell to #10 in its fifth weekend of release as it added $3.6 million to bring its domestic total to $90.9 million.  It still has an outside chance at making $100 million domestically, but it has already earned $248.6 million overseas.
 
Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer, one of the summer’s best-reviewed action films (93% positive on Rotten Tomatoes) expanded from 8 to 250 theaters and earned just under $1 million.  The post-apocalyptic sci-fi film, which is based on a French graphic novel, is currently being shown in its proper “director’s cut” format and, as one of the most interesting movies of the summer, definitely deserves support (see "'Snowpiercer' Finally Hits American Theaters").
 
Check back here next week to see if Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, which currently has a Tomatometer rating of 94% positive, can unseat Transformers and revitalize a sagging summer box office.

--Tom Flinn