In its second week out, Christopher Nolan’s ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ hangs on to the #1 spot at the box office. This is after many reports that the movie going public were slowing down their entertainment habits in the wake of the shootings in Aurora. Still, ‘Dark Knight Rises’ managed to bring in a healthy $64 million this weekend, bringing the cumulative total so far to $289 million. While it won’t hit the epic numbers of Marvel’s ‘The Avengers’ (or even the numbers of the previous ‘Dark Knight’ film), DC’s caped crusader is still doing pretty darn well with analysts predicting a finish in the $900 million to $1 billion range worldwide.
The new sci-fi comedy, ‘The Watch’, starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn, Jonah Hill, and Richard Ayoade, opened to the #3 spot with $13 million. Not too shabby for an R-rated comedy that decided to premiere while ‘Dark Knight Rises’ was still in theaters… especially one that was getting some pretty shabby reviews from early viewings.
Marc Webb’s ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ reboot slipped down to #6 this week with $6.8 million, for a total of $242 million for its 4 weeks of release so far.
Unless you count the heroes of ‘Ice Age: Continental Drift’ as sci-fi since they’ve obviously can jump through various periods of prehistory at will, then that’s it for genre films this week. The aforementioned ‘Ice Age 4’ held the #2 spot with $13.3 million in revenue and a total of $115 million. This is the lowest total ever for an ‘Ice Age’ flick.
Rounding out the top five box office were the premiere of the dance flick ‘Step Up Revolution’ at #4 ($11.8 million) and the raunchy talking teddy bear comedy ‘Ted’, bringing in $7.35 million in its fifth week of release.
This coming weekend, Len Wiseman’s remake of the classic ‘Total Recall’, now starring Colin Farrell, Kate Beckinsale, Jessica Biel, and Bryan Cranston, will attempt to dethrone Batman as the genre film of choice. Despite the trailers looking pretty darn good, I just don’t think it’ll have the bang to do it.
