Spider-Man. Jurassic Park. Despicable Me. Moviegoers heading to air-conditioned theaters during the Fourth of July holiday can rely on seeing one of those Sony, Universal or Illumination franchises on the marquee over the past 25 years. And count on Despicable spinoff Minions & Monsters to put up big numbers for 5-day grosses this year, given the Toy Story-levels of goodwill for that series.
But when zeroing in on the question of single-day grosses (i.e. receipts from the July 4 day itself) there’s a leader that happens to be none of the above. It’s also a title that launched a big-screen franchise that keeps rumbling on in theaters since it arrived 19 years ago in July. Fittingly for the holiday, it’s also a Michael Bay movie. Paramount and Hasbro’s Transformers (2007), starring Shia LaBeouf and Megan Fox, still leads the way among top-grossing titles on the July 4 holiday with $29 million for the day, not adjusted for inflation. As per Rentrak figures prepared for The Hollywood Reporter, here are the other top titles:
Browsing the single-day grosses, a few details stand out: There’s only a few non-sequels on the list (if we’re including Transformers, which is pre-branded IP and did hit the big screen in 1986 in animated form). Disney hasn’t leveraged the release frame for its tentpoles in the same way that Sony, Universal and Paramount have. Will Smith’s star power propelled non-sequel superhero title Hancock and the Steven Spielberg-Tom Cruise pairing helped push War of the Worlds into tentpole territory. There’s also one indie, Sound of Freedom, which put Angel Studios on the map back when it broke out just a few years ago in 2023.
