The final chapter in The Dark Knight trilogy had a great $88 million opening in only 17 countries. That was more than enough to secure the #1 spot and leave former leaders Ice Age: Continental Drift and The Amazing Spider-Man in the dust.
Back in 2008 The Dark Knight opened to around $51 million from those same markets, that means The Dark Knight Rises got quite a big bump with its $88 million, more than even I was expecting (here). Since the 2008 flick ended up with $468.5 million internationally, it’s safe to say that this new film, already at over $110 million internationally, will finish a lot higher. Right now I’m gonna go with over $600 million, add to it an expected $440-450 million from North America and it should easily top the $1 billion made by The Dark Knight.
So we’re left with an interesting question here, what happens next? Can Warner really shelve this amazing cash-cow, now that they are all out of Harry Potters? What do you guys think, also keep in mind I haven’t seen The Dark Knight Rises (yet, will do tomorrow) so please keep things as spoiler-free as humanly possible.
Ice Age: Continental Drift came in 2nd with $56.3 million, down 42% from last week. So far this latest Blue Sky animation has made over $450 million internationally and about $545 million worldwide. North American numbers clearly won’t be up to the series standards on this one so people around the world will have to work extra hard (with their pockets) to make Continental Drift as popular as Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs ($886.7 million). But it won’t happen; this 4th entry will probably end up around $750-770 million worldwide, a great number nonetheless.
In 3rd place The Amazing Spider-Man seems to have hit a wall called The Dark Knight Rises, down a discouraging 56% and all. That means $29.3 million for the weekend and a new total of $386 million internationally. Worldwide the web-crawler has made $618.2 million at this point and it’s probably good for at least $100 million more. That means it could come close to the $783.8 million of Spider-Man 2, the lowest (not by much) grosser of the Raimi trilogy.
Brave makes a jump to 4th place thanks to a bunch of new markets, up 66% with $20.4 million and $73.1 million so far. Now don’t worry, the film is still only available in 24 markets with over 50 coming up in the next couple of weeks. It’s still business as usual for Pixar with $284 million worldwide now and a target of around $580 million when all is said and done.
Chinese film The Four rounds out the top 5 with another great weekend, down just 15% to $11 million and a total of $24.1 million.
