Christopher Nolan’s box office behemoth, “The Dark Knight” has finally been beaten at the U.S. Box Office by Ben Stiller’s “Tropic Thunder.” The Vietnam comedy took the top spot with a $26 million dollar weekend gross and took an estimated $10 million-ish dollars in its first two days of release (it opened early on a Wednesday) for a five day cume of around $37 mil.
‘TDK’s’ box office victim last week, “Pineapple Express” made less money on its first weekend than ‘Thunder,’ but the stoner comedy took five million more dollars after five days of release (‘Pineapple’ had a 50+% drop in it’s second weekend, but has grossed an impressive near-$63 million which is twice that of its $27 mil budget).
Three other movies opened in the U.S. this weekend; the animated ‘Star Wars’ film opened at number three with $15.5 million despite atrocious reviews; the Kiefer Sutherland horror/thriller, “Mirrors,” opened at number four to poor reviews and a mediocre $11.1 million dollars. Rounding out the top ten was Woody Allen’s new film, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona.” The sexy comedy made $3.71 million in its first weekend of theatrical release.
Even though, ‘Thunder’ was the first film to beat ‘Batman,’ its bound to still seem like a disappointment due to its inflated budget of $135 million dollars. The war comedy opened to solid reviews, but along with the rest of the box office it seemed to be casualties of the Summer Olympics and has a long way to go before it gets out of the red. These numbers suggest it’ll stall long before it has a chance to even break even unless it happens to take off in market overseas, but right now the studio execs are probably looking a little nervous.
Meanwhile, “The Dark Knight” has become the 2nd highest grossing film ever in North America outbesting the original “Star Wars” with a total gross of $471,493,000. – Mickey Pagels