SHOWBUZZDAILY Early Friday Boxoffice – 8/3/12: “Dark Knight” Still Above the Rest

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THE DARK KNIGHT RISES (Warners) appears to be headed for its 3rd (and probably last) weekend in 1st place, according to preliminary numbers at Deadline.  The Caped Crusader’s Friday is estimated over $10M, which should mean a weekend around $35M.  That would bring its total by Sunday night to over $350M, which would tie it with Avatar as the 3rd fastest film ever to reach that level, behind only The Avengers and The Dark Knight.  (A 45% drop from last weekend to $35M would be just around the same Weekend 3 decline that Dark Knight had, but the chances of Rises catching up to Dark Knight–by the end of the weekend, they should be about $40M apart–are just about gone, and Rises will have to settle for “only” being one of the Top 10 grossers of all time.)

TOTAL RECALL (Sony) is being estimated at a $9.5M Friday, which isn’t much better than the $8M opening day the Arnold Schwarzenegger original had in 1990.  And the news is likely to get worse, since boxoffice is more frontloaded these days and word of mouth won’t be as good for the remake as it was for the first picture.   (However, if the weekend number is anywhere close, count on Sony to estimate over $25.5M, to avoid the humiliation of being out-opened by Recall‘s 22-year old ancestor.)   None of these numbers are good for a picture with an estimated $135M budget (plus probably $125M in marketing costs.)

DIARY OF A WIMPY KID:  DOG DAYS (20th) looks to be headed for the lowest opening of its franchise, with a $6M start that’s below the $7.4M and $7.3M opening days of the previous pictures.  It should have a $17-20M opening, OK for a relatively low-budget series.

THE WATCH (20th) will probably be down over 50% in its 2d weekend, and the drop for STEP UP REVOLUTION (Summit) may be more like 60%.  The former is dead in the water; the latter can still hope for international boxoffice to bail it out.

TED (Universal) continues to have the best hold among the older titles, down around 20% from last Friday, with THE AMAZING SPIDER-MAN (Sony) down about 30%, ICE AGE 4 (20th) and BRAVE (Pixar/Disney) down about 40%, and MAGIC MIKE (Warners), which lost a lot of theatres, down about 45%.