Transformers 3 Joins Worldwide Box

It is a good news/bad news weekend for Transformers: Dark of the Moon. The good news is the movie joined the Top 10 of All Time Worldwide Grosses at the box office. The bad news is Harry Potter 7.2 beat it to the $1 billion club by $20 million. On the brighter side, the movie is practically guaranteed to cross the threshold in just a few short days.

The current tally for DOTM stands at $337.9M domestic and $645M from international ticket sales. That number includes $9.5 million from the movie's first weekend in Japan with 82% of those sales coming from IMAX. The international ticket sales this weekend added an additional $42M to the total. On the U.S. side the movie slipped to 8th place with $6M for the weekend.

As of now, Dark of the Moon rests as the top movie of the year in the US with its $337.9M ahead Harry Potter 7.2 ($318.5M) and Pirates 4 ($238.2M). However it’s $982.9M in worldwide sales places it behind Pirates 4 ($1032.8M) and Potter ($1008.5) for the year. Still a touch soon to know for sure but chances are DOTM will be the top movie of 2011 in the US (something that matters a great deal to studios) and may land at number 2 in worldwide sales (another important studio stat). All this means that not only did the movie hold its own against stiff competition like Potter 7.2 but makes a heck of an argument on why the franchise needs to continue sooner rather than later.