Weekend Box Office: ‘Dark Knight’ Still Rising

Despite the tragic shooting in Colorado and inconsistent word-or-mouth, ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ easily nabbed the #1 spot this weekend with $64 million. The ten-day totals for this trilogy-closer are north of $289 million domestically, which give the film a whopping $537.7 worldwide total. While this haul is large enough to deem the $250 million comic book movie a success, its 10-day total is down $24 million from that of its 2008 predecessor, ‘The Dark Knight‘.

The Dark Knight Rises‘ brought in a nice chunk of change this weekend, but it was just about the only movie that did. The #2 slot wasn’t filled by either of the new openers, but rather by the three-week-old family flick ‘Ice Age: Continental Drift‘, which added another $13.3 million to its total. Unfortunately, that’s not enough to make up for last weekend’s lost profits caused by the Colorado shooting. After 17 days, ‘Continental Drift’ has only earned $114.8 million.

This weekend’s two wide openers finished in the third and fourth spots. ‘The Watch‘ earned $13 million and ‘Step Up: Revolution‘ earned $11.8 million. After Ben Stiller’s ensemble comedy ‘Tower Heist‘ underperformed last fall, the actor’s days of being a big star may be over. You can surround him by as many famous co-stars as you’d like, but he’s still not going to give you a very big return.

Even with the help of 3D ticket prices, ‘Step Up: Revolution’ failed to do much business. Disney once owned the franchise, but sold it off to Summit when ‘Step Up 3‘ opened to a measly $15.8 million. Bad buy, Summit.

Rounding out the Top 5 was Universal’s five-week-old ‘Ted‘. The crude, R-rated Seth MacFarlane comedy has now brought in $193.6 million. The execs at Fox who passed on the $50 million flick must be kicking themselves right now.

On 13 screens, Fox Searchlight’s ‘Ruby Sparks‘ pulled a nice $152,000. Written and directed by team behind ‘Little Miss Sunshine‘, the Paul Dano / Zoe Kazan comedy will expand across the U.S. over the next few weeks.

On just three screens, the grizzly NC-17 thriller ‘Killer Joe‘ brought in $37,900. With that restrictive rating, as curious as you may be, I wouldn’t expect ‘Joe’ to come around to your neighborhood.

Finally, the 2012 Sundance musical documentary ‘Searching for Sugar Man‘ earned $28,500 on just three screens.

Top 10:

1. ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ (Warner Bros.) – $64,075,000

2. ‘Ice Age: Continental Drift’ (Fox) – $13,300,000

3. ‘The Watch’ (Fox) – $13,000,000

4. ‘Step Up Revolution’ (Summit) – $11,800,000

5. ‘Ted’ (Universal) – $7,353,000

6. ‘The Amazing Spider-Man’ (Sony) – $6,800,000

7. ‘Brave’ (Buena Vista) – $4,237,000

8. ‘Magic Mike’ (Warner Bros.) – $2,580,000

9. ‘Savages’ (Universal) – $1,753,000

10. ‘Moonrise Kingdom’ – $1,387,000

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