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HOW LOUD THE THUNDER? Friday, August 15 2008 
Until
Thursday,
the
collective
wisdom
of
box-office
prognosticators
was
that
DreamWorks/Paramount's
Tropic
Thunder
would
finally
unseat
The
Dark
Knight
at
the
top
of
the
box
office.
Now,
they're
hedging
their
bets.
Tropic
Thunder,
it
seems,
may
have
run
out
of
lightning
before
the
weekend
began,
with
The
Dark
Knight
emerging
as
the
dark-horse
possibility
to
win
a
fifth
victory.
Thunder
opened
on
Wednesday
to
a
less-than-spectacular
$6.5
million,
then
rapidly
fell
on
Thursday
to
$4.5
(more)MOVIE REVIEWS: TROPIC THUNDER Wednesday, August 13 2008 
Advocates
for
the
mentally
disabled
may
be
denouncing
the
Ben
Stiller
comedy
Tropic
Thunder.
Movie
critics,
by
and
large,
are
not.
In
the
Chicago
Sun-Times,
Roger
Ebert
awards
the
film
three
and
a
half
stars,
writing,
"It's
the
kind
of
summer
comedy
that
rolls
in,
makes
a
lot
of
people
laugh
and
rolls
on
to
video.
It's
been
a
good
summer
for
that."
Bob
Strauss
in
the
Los
Angeles
Daily
News
was
apparently
still
chuckling
(more) |
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The Dark Knight's reign as the box-office leader ended propitiously over the weekend as it raked in an additional $16.8 million to become the second-highest grossing film of all time domestically. It has now taken in $471.5 million. Over the past 30 years, the previous No. 2, the original Star Wars, had taken in $461 million. The all-time champ is 1997's Titanic with $601 million. Although it opened with a much smaller gross than Knight, Titanic continued to average around $35 million weekly through its first three months of release. Opening on December 21, 1997, it did not dip below $20 million until the first weekend of April. By that time it had already taken in $515 million. Knight was taken down by the comedy Tropic Thunder which made a modest debut with $26 million. (On a per-theater basis, it was also beaten by the Woody Allen movie Vicky Cristina Barcelona, which averaged $5,361 at 692 theaters, while Knight averaged $4,677 at 3,590 theaters.) The animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars debuted with $15.5 million, while the horror film Mirrors opened with $11.1 million. In its second weekend Pineapple Express dropped a whopping 57 percent to place fifth with $10 million. Overall, the box-office total was nearly identical to the comparable weekend a year ago, suggesting that the Olympic Games telecasts had little impact on ticket sales. (Then again, all of the top films advertised heavily on the telecasts). 
