UPDATED Saturday: Paramount/Skydance/Hasbro’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts has the edge right now on Sony Pictures’ Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, $60M to $55.88M. But today will still determine whether the latter pulls ahead. Is the difference really a matter of Rise of the Beasts gobbling up all the Imax and PLF screens, which are driving 37% of the gross? Or is it all about the animals like Optimus Primal?

In Screen Engine/Comscore’s PostTrak exits, moviegoers said they went to see Rise of the Beasts because it was part of a franchise they loved (42%), it looked fun and entertaining (41%), genre/type of movie (35%), and the VFX (27%). Big family pull here as well, with 23% adults and 9% kids attending. Moviegoers don’t come for the stars when it comes to these movies. Some 8% are attending for the actors, and 7% for the actresses, per PostTrak.

First, an amazing comeback for Rise of the Beasts. This was a movie that saw its opening projections drop on tracking from a near $70M three weeks ago to as low as $47M-$52M, so to see that the seventhquel has upped its way to $60M is pretty impressive. Spider-Verse is close to where we saw it at $16.6M in its second Friday, and Rise of the Beasts is at a strong $25.6M yesterday (including $8.8M previews).

Rise of the Beasts’ opening weekend is a complete rebound from the 3-days of the previous two franchise installments, Bumblebee ($21.6M) and Transformers: The Last Knight ($44.6M). God knows if this franchise, opening-wise, will ever touch the $100M+ starts of some its other sequels. However, the robots keep trucking, and a majority of that has to do with its overseas and China appeal.

Moviegoers gave Rise of the Beasts an A- CinemaScore, the same grade as Bumblebee, and an upgrade from Last Knight’s B+. Audience exits from PostTrak are at 83% positive and a 68% recommend — not bad. Kids under 12 are more excited about the sequel at 90% positive and a 73% recommend. A huge diverse audience as expected at 30% Black, 28% Latino and Hispanic ( a growth in these first two demos as Bumblebee drew 25% Latino and Hispanic and 14% Black), 25% Caucasian and 17% Asian/other. The 18-34 bunch repped 54% of business, with the biggest demo being 18-24 year olds at 31%. Transformers played strong everywhere, but was strongest in the South, South Central, and West. 

Rise of the Beasts was loud on social media, per RelishMix, with a social media universe that stretched to 895.1M, out-pacing action sci-fi comps by 2.8x across Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok. Hasbro and the sequel’s movie pages are driving 32M alone. The social media wattage here for Rise of the Beasts is ahead of Bumblebee (325.6 SMU), Super Mario Bros (607M SMU), Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania (723.2M SMU) and Across the Spider-Verse (665.1M SMU). Momentum on the campaign has throttled since the Super Bowl spot in February, which pulled in 43.3M in the 24 hours following the big game online.

Rise of the Beasts‘ social media queen is YouTube personality Liza Koshy, who has pointed her 74.5M fans toward the movie. She provides the voice to the Transformer Acree in the film. Other actors’ social media pull include Ron Pearlman (4.6M), Tobe Nwigwe (3.7M), and Anthony Ramos (2.1M).

The bad and good news on the overall marketplace: all films are grossing an estimated $169M, which is down 21% from the same June weekend a year ago, which did $214.8M — but that’s when Universal had Jurassic World: Dominion opening to $145M. However, we are +2% from the same frame in 2019 ($165.7M), which is when Universal/Illuminaton’s The Secret Life of Pets 2 debuted to $46.6M.

UPDATED, Friday afternoon: Paramount/Skydance/Hasbro’s Transformers: Rise of the Beasts will easily win Friday with $25 million over Sony Pictures Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse‘s second Friday of $16.5M. But as far as the weekend goes at this point, it’s too close to call who will finish No. 1, with both coming in around $58M.

While Rise of the Beasts now has the PLF and Imax screens in its 3,678 theater count, the question remains how big the films’ respective Saturdays are. Some rivals are betting that Spider-Verse could surge 50% on Saturday over Friday, while Rise of the Beasts eases back a third from its combined $8.8M previews + Friday take. All of this hinges on how much walk-up business Spider-Verse gets to Rise of the Beasts’ presales. The Rotten Tomatoes Audience score on Rise of the Beasts is 88%, which is higher than Bumblebee (74%) and way ahead of Transformers: The Last Knight (43%).

A $58M weekend would get Spider-Verse to a 10-day total of $228.5M by Sunday. On Saturday, the Sony Animation title will beat the lifetime cume of the original first movie, 2018’s Oscar-winning Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse ($190.2M), in an amazing nine days.

Industry estimates for the third weekend of Disney’s The Little Mermaid in third place is $24M, down 41% after a $6.8M Friday, (-42%), and a running total by Sunday of $230M. That total is just 1% behind Aladdin at the same point in time, with the latter Disney live-action feature take of an animated movie ending its stateside run at $355.5M.

PREVIOUSLY, Friday AM: Transformers: Rise of the Beasts grossed $8.8 million in previews from 3,100-plus locations — that’s from a fan event at 7 p.m. Wednesday and previews that began at 3 p.m. Thursday. Sans Wednesday fan grosses, the Paramount/Skydance/Hasbro sequel did $7.6M.

A recent comp is Fast X’s previews at $7.6M, which wound up doing a $28M first Friday and $67M opening weekend last month.

The debate is whether Rise of the Beasts or Sony Animation’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse in its second weekend takes No. 1. Both are eyeing $50M+. The latter Amy Pascal-Avi Arad-Chris Miller-Phil Lord-Christina Steinberg production did an estimated $10.1M on Thursday at 4,313 theaters, ending its first week with $170.5M. Among Hollywood movies, not including Japanese anime, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse holds the record for the longest running time for an animated movie at 140 minutes per Comscore — longer than The Incredibles 2 at 118 minutes (in comparison to movies that are purely animated, not hybrid).

Tracking was hot three weeks ago for Rise of the Beasts nearing $70M, but has cooled since. Paramount has strived to reboot the franchise here with a more grounded human storyline and the introduction of the animal Transformers. There’s also a cool, audacious cliffhanger, if this Hasbro franchise can pull it off.

RELATED: ‘Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts’ Trailer: Autobots And Maximals Unite In Fight To Save The World

The previous movie in the franchise, Transformers: The Last Knight, opened on a Wednesday back in 2017 and did $5.5M before posting a $15.6M first day in a weekend that was $44.6M over three days, $68.4M over five. Rise of the Beasts’ preview number also towers over that of the Transformers spinoff movie Bumblebee, which had a pre-Christmas weekend release back in 2018; that pic did $2.85M including both Thursday night and fan sneaks. Bumblebee opened to a three-day of $21.6M.

Rise of the Beasts, co-financed by Skydance, cost a net $195M. The grab here with this long-in-the-tooth feature series is overseas, which is projected at $100M, half of that coming from China where they love the robots in disguise.

The summer box office for the period of May 1-June 4 cleared $1 billion thanks to Spider-Verse, which is 8% ahead of 2022 at the same point in time ($925.1M), but 19% behind the summer of Avengers: Endgame, 2019, which stood at $1.24 billion at that point in time.

The rest of Thursday was as follows:

Disney’s The Little Mermaid did $4M to Spider-Verse‘s $10.1M on Thursday. Little Mermaid, booked at 4,320 theaters, ends Week 2 with $59.5M and a running total of $205.1M.

20th Century Studios/Disney’s The Boogeyman at 3,205 theaters did $1.2M Thursday, -1%, for a first week of $17.7M.

Disney’s fifth week of Guardians of the Galaxy: Vol. 3 at 2,902 theaters did $15.7M after a $1.1M Thursday, -6% from Wednesday, for a running total of $328.6M.

Universal’s Fast X grossed $816K Thursday, -11% from Wednesday, for a third week of $13.7M and running total of $138.9M.