'Star Trek Into Darkness' on its way to a $100 million weekend

Opening on Wednesday night in over 300 IMAX locations, Star Trek Into Darkness debuted to $3.3 million, similar to The Great Gatsby's early take for Thursday night screenings last week. Totals for Thursday haven't been tallied yet. Now playing in 3,868 theatres, the sci-fi sequel is expected to earn a weekend haul upwards of $100 million. One reason that the Wednesday night totals were so low was because Paramount only made the decision to release that evening last week--long after most fanboys would have made their Fandango purchases.

The 3D and IMAX feature has strong reviews, just like the 2009 original reboot. The 2009 Star Trek earned a 95% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes, and the sequel is running 87% positive. I felt both movies were equally good, and if anything, the lower ratings this time around are just due to people raising the benchmark about what they expect a J.J. Abrams-directed Star Trek movie to be. The stakes are personal this time around. "One major improvement of Into Darkness is
its more vivid villain," our critic Kevin Lally notes. Benedict Cumberbatch plays the adversary with "tremendously
imposing fierceness and icy elegance," making the movie not only a battle of brute force but of cerebral maneuvering.

Just like with Iron Man 3, no other wide release wanted to play second fiddle to Star Trek Into Darkness. Given the similarity between the two films, Iron Man 3 should experience a larger-than-average drop this weekend, while last week's The Great Gatsby should dip only in relation to its so-so word-of-mouth.

For indie-seeking audiences, director Noah Baumbach's latest may be in black-and-white, but it's already being considered his most accessible work to date. Greta Gerwig stars in Frances Ha (4 theatres), a counterpoint to "Girls" that should appeal to urban 20-somethings and cinephiles alike. In my review, I praised the "spot-on, exquisitely crafted portrait of a floundering 20-something," and this is one movie I'm definitely rooting for. Another indie of note is the "genre gem" Black Rock, "a thriller riff" that gets "the job of entertainment
done very well," according to our reviewer Doris Toumarkine. If the idea of innocent hikers being hunted by deranged army vets sounds fun to you, start standing in the ticket line.

On Monday, we'll see if Star Trek Into Darkness exceeded the $75 million opening of its 2009 predecessor, and if Frances Ha's unspooling suggests an indie success.