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Two new movies entered the marketplace in wide release and two more movies fell far behind the biggest movie of the late summer as Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (Warner Bros.) remained on top for the third weekend in a row with roughly $36 million. Despite a big 60% drop in its second weekend, it held out better in its third weekend, being down just 41%, and so far it's grossed $354 million domestically, making it the third-highest grossing movie of the year. $5.7 million of this weekend was made in IMAX theaters bringing its domestic IMAX total to $48 million. We're still waiting for international numbers on The Dark Knight Rises, although we've heard that globally, the movie has done $70 million in IMAX theaters.
The movie expected to give The Dark Knight Rises some sort of competition was director Len (Underworld) Wiseman's sci-fi action-thriller remake Total Recall (Sony), starring Colin Farrell, Jessica Biel, Kate Beckinsale and Bryan Cranston, but after an opening day of $9.1 million, it ended up opening in second place with an estimated $26 million in 3,601 theaters. According to Sony, the audience for the movie was 58% male and 53% over 30, although the C+ CinemaScore it received does not bode well for legs domestically. The movie reportedly cost $150 million to make.
Total Recall fared slightly better overseas where it opened in 12 Asian markets including India, Malaysia, Thailand, Taiwan and Singapore, all where it took the top spot, bringing in $6.2 million in those countries. (Of interest is that the original name of one of the impoverished and overcrowded section of earth called "New Asia" was changed to "The Colony" possibly to not offend Sony's Asian markets.)
The third installment in 20th Century Fox's popular family franchise Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days failed to deliver with its summer opening, amassing just $14.7 million over the weekend in 3,391 theaters. That's far less than the $20 million plus opening of the previous two installments, released in 2008 and 2010.
Fox has had far more success with the animated Ice Age: Continental Drift (20th Century Fox), which brought in $8.4 million in its fourth weekend to take its first month total to $131.8 million. That's still $40 million below the $172 million made by its predecessor "Dawn of the Dinosaurs" in the summer of 2009, although the movie has done enough business internationally to make up for it.
In its second weekend, Fox's R-rated comedy The Watch, starring Ben Stiller, Vince Vaughn and Jonah Hill, took a major tumble, dropping to fifth place with $6.4 million, down 50% from its opening week. It has grossed $25.4 million to date, which is roughly half of its reported $68 million production budget.
Seth McFarlane's comedy Ted, starring Mark Wahlberg and Mila Kunis, crossed the $200 million mark this weekend, making it the 8th film of the year to cross that mark and Universal's second movie of the year to cross it. It also makes the movie the highest-grossing non-animated comedy of the year. It grossed roughly $5.5 million this weekend for 6th place with a total of $203 million in six weeks.
Step Up Revolution (Summit Entertainment) dropped 55% in its second weekend to bring in $5.3 million for seventh place with $23.1 million grossed in ten days.
The Amazing Spider-Man (Sony) earned $4.3 million for eighth place, bringing its total domestic gross to $250.6 million. It's faring better overseas this weekend, bringing in $6.1 million to make its international total $427.1 million and its global total $678 million.
Disney•Pixar's Brave dropped to ninth place with $2.9 million and a domestic gross of $223 million while tenth place went to Steven Soderbergh's Magic Mike (Warner Bros.), starring Channing Tatum and Matthew McConaughey, with $1.4 million and $110 million grossed to date.
The Top 10 took in roughly $111.3 million this weekend down 28% from the August opening weekend last year when 20th Century Fox debuted Rise of the Planet of the Apes to the tune of $54 million for first place. The R-rated comedy The Change-Up (Universal), pairing Jason Bateman and Ryan Reynolds, didn't do as well with just $13.5 million.
As far as limited releases, the Rashida Jones-Andy Samberg relationship comedy Celeste and Jesse Forever (Sony Pictures Classics) opened in four theaters in New York and L.A. where it scored $112 thousand or $28 thousand per site.
