Tropic Thunder took advantage of strong word of mouth, a softening box office, and a host of weak contenders to stay at the top of the weekend box office charts for a second week in a row. The four films opening against it were all hit-and-miss.
Dropping only 37% in its second weekend, the R-rated comedy, Tropic Thunder, managed to pull in $16.3M to take the top spot on the weekend box office chart once again. The $90M film has a 12-day tally of $65.8M and should find its way to $105-115M before it’s over.
Opening in second place with a weekend gross of $14.5M was The House Bunny. The Anna Faris starer performed well above all expectations and averaged a solid $5,355 from 2,714 sites. The $25M film played heavily to women and served as very effective counter-programming to the great number of male skewing films now playing at the multiplex.
The Jason Statham actioner Death Race opened in a disappointing third place with $12.6M from 2,532 locations. The film averaging a respectable $4,985 per theater and played much like Statham’s previous films (Crank opened with $10.5M while Transporter 2 opened with $16.5M), but this film cost $45M to produce so the expectations were much higher. Long term potential doesn’t seem great.
The Dark Knight pulled in another $10.5M in its sixth weekend to place fourth over the weekend. Sliding only 36%, the film has now grossed $489.4M and should surpass the $500M mark next weekend. It also brought in another $34.7M from 62 international markets raising the worldwide cume to $871.5M and virtually assuring that The Dark Knight will become only the fourth film to ever gross over $1 Billion in global grosses (the other three are Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest).
Proving the critics were right about this one, Star Wars: The Clone Wars suffered the worst decline in the top ten. The film tumbled 61% to $5.7M, bringing the ten-day tally to only $25M. Look for this film to finish up with about $36-38M.
Rounding out the top ten:
- 6. Pineapple Express - $5.5M - down 44% - $73.8M cume
- 7. Mirrors - $5M - down 55% - $20.2M cume
- 8. Mamma Mia! - $4.3M - down 29% - $124.5M cume
- 9. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor - $4.2M - down 49% - $93.9M cume
The new Ice Cube football pic The Longshots rounded out the top ten for the weekend. The film suffered from lukewarm reviews and managed to bring in only $4.1M for the weekend averaging a weak $1,953 from 2,089 locations.
The weekend’s only other new release was the Rainn Wilson comedy The Rocker which opened on Wednesday. Unfortunately, for the co-star of The Office, the film opened in thirteenth place bringing in just $2.6M from 2,784 theaters (the widest release of the weekend). It averaged an incredibly bad $947 per site. It was the worst opening in box office history for a film opening on more than 2,600 theaters. The Rocker has collected just $3.7M in the five days since it opened.
Overall, the $82.7M the top ten films grossed this weekend was down 2% from this weekend last year when Superbad pulled in $18M in its second weekend to retain the top spot. However, this weekend is up 9% from the same weekend in 2006 when Invincible opened at number one with $17M.
Weekend Box Office (August 15–17, 2008)
Next weekend is another crowded weekend as four new releases, Babylon A.D., Disaster Movie, Traitor, and College all try to take the top spot away from Tropic Thunder.
its all good for the dark knight. yet to see tropic thunder however. but seeing as downey seamed the dark knight was to inteliget for him i think tropic thunder will be to 'dull' for me and i may give it a miss.