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Seven days, seven wins. Yes, Transformers: Age of Extinction can claim victory once again as it handily won first place at the domestic box office on July 3rd. Get used to more of the same as the potential challengers to Michael Bay’s reign of terror have fallen by the wayside.

The better news for Team Transformium is that Age of Extinction increased 25% with $9.7 million yesterday. Yesterday, I said not to read anything into its 26% drop. The reverse is true of the gain. Holiday calendar configuration is creating havoc with all of the major titles in release.

Circling back to 2008, the last time July 4th fell on a Friday, similar box office behavior was demonstrated. The non-openers almost all increased on July 3rd after falling a similar amount on July 2nd. Conversely, the new titles struggle to maintain their Wednesday performances the following day. The amazing aspect of box office behavior is that six years later, an entirely different batch of films are all acting similarly. The new films struggled to match their opening day take. Everything else in the top ten enjoyed a solid daily gain.

Age of Extinction has now earned $138.3 million domestically. Given the revenue it garnered the last couple of days, it appears headed toward a $42 million weekend, give or take a few million. That would leave Transformers 4 well short of $200 million after 10 days of release despite being boosted a bit by holiday box office inflation. The first three Transformers movies needed (in reverse order) eight days, five days and 12 days of release to reach that mark. Barring something unforeseen, Transformers: Age of Extinction will not match the pace of even 2007’s Transformers. If the film were not destroying Chinese box office, we would be speaking about its domestic performance in harsh terms.

Tammy, the presumed challenger for first place, is clearly not a threat. After debuting to $6.2 million, the comedy slid only slightly. Its 11% drop to $5.5 million is ostensibly the worst in the top ten. That statistic is a bit misleading, though. Tammy’s $1.3 million on Tuesday evening boosted the Wednesday number. If we remove that from the calculation, Tammy increased 12%. A (wildly) general rule of thumb for box office in situations such as this calendar configuration is that a movie should earn 2.5 times its Wednesday/Thursday total. If Tammy follows that pattern, it should earn about $29.2 million this weekend.

The battle for third place continues between the other two major releases this week, Earth to Echo and Deliver Us from Evil. Both titles experienced modest setbacks on Thursday. Deliver Us from Evil fell 7% to $2.6 million, effectively tying it with Earth to Echo, which was down only 2%. After two days, the horror movie is ahead of the family film by about $250,000, $5.5 million to $5.25 million. As I mentioned yesterday, I expect the ET knockoff to emerge the winner in this tightly contested battle.

Combined box office for the top ten yesterday was $29.1 million. That tally represents an increase of 11% from Wednesday’s $26.3 million. Before the new products entered the marketplace, Tuesday’s total was $21.7 million. So, we have not received the overall bump that studios would have hoped. Since July 4th box office will be up only somewhat from today, we are shaping up to have one of the worst Independence Day weekends of box office in recent memory.