Google Spots Blockbuster Summer Movies

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Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, the second movie in the series about robots in disguise, exploded in its debut, earning more than $62 million on its opening day alone.

The film has been out for two and a half weeks and has grossed $339 million domestically and $670 million worldwide. With a production budget of $200 million, the return on this movie is already attractive without factoring DVD sales and television rights. Paramount Pictures, the Viacom(VIA.B Quote) subsidiary that distributes the film, is in for a huge payday.

Predicting which movies will blast off and which will fizzle is difficult, but a free tool from Google(GOOG Quote) offers some potentially lucrative clues. Google Trends allows users to graph how often people search certain words, whether they're movie titles or product names. The results can serve as a gauge of consumer interest.

Based on this data, there are several potential cash cows coming out this summer. The following graph shows the search frequency for Transformers as well as other highly anticipated movies this year.

Summer Movie Google Searches Source: Google Trends

While the search activity for Transformers has been bigger than those for any other major summer movie, interest in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince has been steadily growing ahead of its July 15 release. The film is being searched more frequently than Transformers during a similar period ahead of its release. This bodes well for Warner Brothers, the Time Warner(TWX Quote) unit that's distributing the film.

The company has been adapting J.K. Rowling's popular children's books for the big screen. The previous film, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, cost $150 million to make and grossed $938 million, excluding DVD sales and television rights.