‘Star Trek IV’ Blasts Into Box-Office Orbit

What’s that famous Trekkie motto, “to boldly go where no ‘Star Trek’ sequel has gone before”?

Paramount’s “Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home” blasted into the box-office stratosphere over the five-day holiday weekend, taking in $25.4 million at 1,349 theaters. The debut beat out the “Star Trek III” June, 1984, opening by $9 million. (That chapter opened over a three-day Memorial Day weekend.) The per-screen average for “Star Trek IV”: $18,900.

Impressive as the numbers were, the picture failed to beat out the five-day box office record set last Thanksgiving by “Rocky IV,” which took in $32 million at 1,325 theaters.

Paramount also scored heavily this holiday weekend with “Crocodile Dundee” snaring another $10.1 million over the same five-day period, bringing its cumulative gross to a staggering $94.3 million. The movie is now the third-best performer of the year, behind Paramount’s “Top Gun” and Columbia’s “Karate Kid II.”

If that’s not enough, Paramount still has another potential hit in Eddie Murphy’s “The Golden Child,” which opens Dec. 12. “Golden Child” producer Bob Wachs says the numbers on “Star Trek IV” are a bonus. “Good movies help everyone,” Wachs said. “There’s plenty of room for us too.”

In other box-office news, Buena Vista’s “The Color of Money” pocketed $4.5 million, bringing its total to $39.6 million.

In the animation wars, Universal’s “An American Tail” took in $9 million at 1,248 screens while Buena Vista’s reissue of “Song of the South” took in $6.4 million at 1,529 theaters.