Tropic Thunder didn't make a huge splash at the box office this weekend, but it had the honor of being at the right place and the right time to be the movie that supplanted The Dark Knight as the number one movie in America.
With $26 million Thunder handily topped Knight's $16 million total. But you won't see Batman crying over it. The Gotham City sequel enjoyed a rare ride at number one for four weekends straight and on Saturday overtook Star Wars' place as the second highest grossing movie in American history. With $471 million in the bank so far The Dark Knight won't beat Titanic's $600 milllion total, but its second place achievement isn't one that will be topped anytime soon either.
Star Wars: The Clone Wars came in third this weekend with a miserable $15 million total. While LucasFilm hasn't said much about how much they spent on the film, if it kept par with other animated films of a similar quality it probably came in somewhere around the $80 million mark at a minimum. That spells financial failure for the latest Star Wars venture, and hopefully means we won't be seeing anymore like it hitting theaters anytime soon.
Keifer Sutherlands latest thriller Mirrors fared even worse, debuting at fourth place with $11 million. Meanwhile small releases Vicky Cristian Barcelona (which managed to sneak into tenth place on the chart), Fly Me To The Moon (twelfth place) and Henry Poole Is Here (a distant seventeenth) all struggled under the weight of summer's descending hot shots. Though all three movies opened in fewer than 700 theaters they still struggled to get any real recognition and little to no hope for the future. Poole is slated for a wider release at the end of the month, but even then it will be lucky to break into anything but the lowest spot in the top ten.
