THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) remained effortlessly in front for a 2d straight weekend, according to preliminary Friday numbers at Deadline. Rises earned another $20M on Friday, bringing it to $245M in 8 days, and a likely Weekend 2 of $66M, which would bring it to around $290M by Sunday night (plus hundreds of millions abroad). It’s still unclear whether Rises will catch up to The Dark Knight, which made $23.2M on its 2d Friday and had a $261.8M 8-day total. However, if the preliminary Friday number holds, Rises will have a daily increase of over 50% from Thursday, significantly better than Dark Knight‘s 41% increase on its 2d Friday. The question will play out over time, as Dark Knight had a spectacularly robust run: after its 53% Weekend 2 drop, and a 43% drop in Weekend 3, it didn’t fall by as much as 40% again until the last weekend in September, its 11th weekend in release.
Nothing else was even close to Dark Knight Rises on Friday. STEP UP REVOLUTION (Summit) appears to be unexpectedly in 2d place, with a $5.5M Friday and perhaps a $14M weekend, which would be the lowest opening weekend of its franchise. That’s enough for 2d place not because it’s doing well, but because it’s better than the disastrous THE WATCH (20th), estimated at a $4.8M opening day and a $12-14M weekend, marking it as a movie no one wanted to see despite its starry cast.
It’s difficult to tell how much any Aurora aftereffect is still impacting the boxoffice. Dark Knight Rises‘ 73% Friday-to-Friday drop is consistent with the 2d Fridays of other movies whose huge Thursday midnights made up a big part of their opening days; Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 went down 84% on its 2d Friday, and Twilight Eclipse and Breaking Dawn Part 1 were down 76-77%. However, it doesn’t seem as though people who skipped going to the movies last weekend are making up for it this week. Among holdovers, the Friday-to-Friday drop for ICE AGE 4 (20th) is 54% to $3.7M, while THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) is down 53% to $1.8M, TED (Universal) is down 38% to $2M, and BRAVE (Pixar/Disney) is down 42% to $1.1M. Only Ice Age 4, of those, will make over $10M this weekend.
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