Tropic Thunder Unseats The Dark Knight from Top Spot at the Box Office

With a slew of new movies opening this weekend it seemed almost impossible that The Dark Knight could hold on to the top spot at the box office for a fifth week. Indeed, it was not able to as Tropic Thunder muscled its way to a top opening and forced Batman to settle for a still impressive second place finish. Five other movies also opened to varying results.

Tropic Thunder did what no other movie has been able to do for the past month, unseat The Dark Knight from the top of the weekend box office chart. Ben Stiller’s war movie comedy grossed an estimated $26M over the Friday-to-Sunday period and $37M over the five days since debuting on Wednesday. The film averaged a solid $7,834 from 3,319 theaters, but was not able to match the five day total of rival R-rated comedy Pineapple Express from just one week earlier despite having a lot more stars and three times the budget ($90M compared to $27M for Pineapple). Still, Thunder should have better legs as it skewed much older than Pineapple and is enjoying excellent reviews and word of mouth.

The Dark Knight had to settle for a second place finish for the first time since opening to record numbers. In its fifth weekend the mega-grossing flick fell just 36% and brought in another $16.8M raising its domestic cume to an astounding $471.5M which was good enough to pass Star Wars to take the second place spot on the all-time blockbuster list. Internationally, the film reached $800.1M which surpassed the $780M of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull to become 2008’s highest grossing movie worldwide. The Dark Knight is still on track for a final domestic tally of $520M and a worldwide gross that should approach the $1 Billion mark.

Opening in third place with $15.5M was Star Wars: The Clone Wars. The film managed a moderate $4,492 average from 3,452 theaters. Reviews have been harsh and the audience size was much smaller than the studio had projected. Could this spell trouble for the animated cartoon series or the planned live action series?

Kiefer Sutherland might not be able to portray Jack Bauer until the new season starts in January, but he does a pretty good impersonation in the horror flick, Mirrrors, which opened in fourth place with an estimated $11.1M. The fairly well reviewed tale of mirrors gone bad did a decent $4,176 from 2,664 locations.

Rounding out the top ten:

• 5. Pineapple Express – $10M – down 57% – $62.9M cume
• 6. The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor – $8.6M – down 48% – $86.6M cume
• 7. Mamma Mia! – $6.5M – down 21% – $116.4M cume
• 8. The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2 – $5.9M – down 45% – $32.1M cume
• 9. Step Brothers – $5M – down 45% – $90.9M cume

Vicky Cristina Barcelona, the new Woody Allen film, rounded out the top ten films for the weekend. Opening in just 692 theaters, the film managed to average a fairly solid $5,361 per location for a weekend gross of $3.7M. Woody Allen films seldom get wide releases anymore and seldom gross much on their opening weekend so this is really no surprise. In fact, the performance of this film is right on par with Allen’s Scoop from the summer of 2006 which also starred Scarlett Johansson.

Opening outside the top ten (12th place) was 3D animation offering Fly Me To The Moon which took in an estimated $2M from 452 3D-equipped theaters for a respectable $4,425 average.

The weekend’s other national release, Henry Poole Is Here, opened in 17th place with an estimated $800,000 from 527 sites for a poor $1,518 average. You’ll have to catch this one on DVD.

Overall the $109.2M the top ten films grossed was 1% better than this weekend last year when Superbad opened at number one with $33.1M and 26% better than 2006 when Snakes on a Plane debuted at number one with $15.2M and showed us that hype isn’t everything.

Weekend Box Office (August 15–17, 2008)

Next week will be another full weekend as studios unload even more movies on us and Death Race, The Rocker, The House Bunny, and The Longshots all hit the crowded cinemas.