Estimated ticket sales for Friday through Sunday at U.S. and Canadian theaters, according to Media By Numbers LLC. Final figures will be released Monday.
1. “Tropic Thunder,” $26 million.
2. “The Dark Knight,” $16.8 million.
3. “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” $15.5 million.
4. “Mirrors,” $11.1 million.
5. “Pineapple Express,” $10 million.
6. “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor,” $8.6 million.
7. “Mamma Mia!”, $6.5 million.
8. “The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 2,” $5.9 million.
9. “Step Brothers,” $5 million.
10. “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” $3.7 million.
LOS ANGELES (AP) – It took four of Hollywood’s biggest stars to take down Batman.
The DreamWorks-Paramount comedy “Tropic Thunder” – with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black and Tom Cruise – debuted at No. 1 with $26 million, bumping “The Dark Knight” to second place after four weekends on top, according to studio estimates Sunday.
The Warner Bros. Batman flick pulled in $16.8 million to raise its total to $471.5 million. “The Dark Knight” passed the original “Star Wars” ($461 million) and now stands as No. 2 on the all-time domestic charts, behind only “Titanic” ($600.8 million).
Taking inflation into account, “The Dark Knight” trails both movies in actual tickets sold, however. “The Dark Knight” would need to gross about $900 million to match the number of admissions for “Titanic” and about $1.2 billion to equal “Star Wars.”
“The Dark Knight” managed to fend off another “Star Wars” movie this weekend. The animated tale “Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” also released by Warner Bros., opened at No. 3 with $15.5 million.
Families made up two-thirds of the audience for “Clone Wars,” Fellman said.
The 20th Century Fox horror tale “Mirrors,” starring Kiefer Sutherland as a security guard whose family is terrorized by spirits, opened at No. 4 with $11.1 million.
Woody Allen returned to commercial form with his Spanish romance “Vicky Cristina Barcelona,” which opened at No. 10 with $3.7 million.
The movie played in narrower release, 692 theaters compared with 3,000-plus for “Tropic Thunder” and “Clone Wars.” Still, it opened far wider than most Allen films, which usually start in a handful of theaters and gradually expand.
Summit Entertainment’s “Fly Me to the Moon,” a 3-D animated tale about three flies that tag along on the Apollo 11 moon landing, debuted in 452 theaters and took in $2 million, finishing at No. 12.
Comments are no longer available on this story