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Following the precedent he recently set to celebrate Shrek the Third's "spectacular" late May opening, Paramount emperor Brad Grey has once again offered his hard-working underlings a special treat, recognizing the "amazing" performance of the franchise-kickstarting Transformers over the six-plus-day extended Fourth of July frame by opening the gates of his Melrose compound and sending his well-behaved studio children out for their weekend Rumspringa a day early. Unfortunately, Grey is not, as we predicted at the time of his supersized Memorial Day holiday, flying the entire company to Cancun, an act of generosity he was clearly reserving for the event that Transformers set a significant box office record that didn't have a clunky "nonsequel" qualifier attached. Better luck in 2010 with Transformers 2: More Giant Fucking Robots Are Coming, Dreamamount gang.

After the jump, the edict that's setting Grey's people free on Friday:

MESSAGE FROM BRAD GREY To: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX CC: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Congratulations to everyone on the Paramount and DreamWorks teams for the amazing opening of Transformers this past week.

With a six-day gross surpassing $155m domestic, our hard work has paid off achieving, for the second time this summer, new film records:

* The biggest Tuesday record of $27.8m previously held by Pirates of the Caribbean 2
* The biggest 4th of July holiday gross of $29m previously held by Spiderman 2
* The biggest opening week for any non-sequel of $155m previously held by Spiderman 1
* For Paramount and DreamWorks, the biggest non-sequel opening AND the biggest live action opening with a three day total of $70.5m

We could not have accomplished this without all of you, but I do want to take a moment to thank our incredible creative team of Steven Spielberg, Director Michael Bay, and Producer Lorenzo DiBonaventura for their creativity and dedication to this project. I also want to thank Brian Goldner, COO at Hasbro, for being part of this powerful alliance.

Many thanks for the amazing leadership shown by David Geffen, Stacey Snider and Adam Goodman at DreamWorks, as well as Rob Moore, Brad Weston, Gerry Rich, Jim Tharp and Andrew Cripps at Paramount.

This is just the beginning of what DreamWorks and Paramount can do together. We're all very proud of this movie and our accomplishments.

With our gratitude please enjoy a day off. For the U.S., please take this Friday, July 13th . For our international offices, we will be working with your local territories for a coordinated day off this summer.

Enjoy this moment in Paramount and DreamWorks' history.

Have a great long weekend,

Brad