With both The Watch and Step Up Revolution failing to match their already mediocre expectations, there was nothing stopping The Dark Knight Rises from claiming another weekend at the top of the box office.
The final part of Nolan’s trilogy fell 61.4% in its 2nd weekend for $62.1 million. Maybe it wasn’t exactly on par with the $75.1 million generated by The Dark Knight but all things considered it was a pretty good number. By now anyone should know that The Dark Knight was one of those freakishly successful flicks that don’t happen very often so to expect the same results from a follow-up, well, you’re just setting yourself up for disappointment. $62.1 million is well within the $60-65 million range that I predicted last Friday. With another $8.1 million on Monday, The Dark Knight Rises has so far made $295.2 million after 11 days. The Dark Knight had $324.3 million around the same time.
Ice Age: Continental Drift was 2nd, down 34.6% with $13.3 million and $116.7 million so far. At the same point Ice Age had $120.2 million, Ice Age 2 $150.3 million and Ice Age 3 $146.8 million. This one is probably stopping around $160 million, give or take a few millions.
Now if Ice Age was 2nd again, even with that number, then The Watch must have had an abysmal performance and guess what, it totally did. The Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill starring R-rated comedy gathered a lousy opening weekend of $12.7 million. With a $68 million budget, this must have looked like a very safe bet a year ago when they were filming it. But as we’ve come to expect, not every egg makes a chicken, sometimes it’s just way too rotten (15%).
Step Up Revolution, the 4th entry in this very weird franchise that makes less and less money with each installment, opened with $11.7 million, a new low. So why are they still making sequels? Well, the films aren’t very expensive (Revolution cost $33 million) and apparently make some good money around the world.
Rounding out the top 5 is Ted, yes, Ted, 5th weekend and still riding with the new kids, not bad at all Seth MacFarlane. Ok, so the comedy made another $7.3 million which means that so far Ted has grossed a very impressive $194.6 million and should join the $200 million club sometime this week, making it the 125th film to do so.
