Transformers 3 Fastest to $500 Million

Box Office Mojo is reporting that Transformers: Dark of the Moon has added another notch to its record belt. The movie is now the fastest in history to pass the $500 million mark in worldwide box office sales by reaching that point in nine days (on Thursday). The previous record was held by Pirates of the Caribbean 3 & 4 which did it in ten days. The comparison isn't a hundred percent though as Pirates 4 didn't do a near same day worldwide release like Dark of the Moon. That two day international difference means a lot considering more than half of their revenue is outside the states.

Transformers 3 ($214M) still is behind Transformers 2 ($241) stateside in sales but overseas it is cleaning up and expected to easily surpass ROTF' same day totals. Current expectations are the movie will pass $600 million on Saturday. From Box Office Mojo, "Adding to Dark of the Moon's impressiveness is that it's hitting these numbers before striking China (July 21) and Japan (July 29), two territories that, combined, contributed $90 million to Revenge of the Fallen and over $170 million to On Stranger Tides."

These numbers do not include weekend sales from this Friday, Saturday, and Sunday which will hopefully remain impressive. Considering that Pirates 4 made over $700 million in international sales, Dark of the Moon has a real chance of passing the $1 billion barrier assuming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 doesn't take all those box office dollars for itself.