Friday Report: 'Dark Knight' Holds Off 'Total Recall'
The Total Recall remake provided a little bit of competition yesterday, but it wasn't nearly strong enough to take down reigning champ The Dark Knight Rises. Meanwhile, Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days had the lowest start yet for a Wimpy Kid title.

The Dark Knight Rises kicked off its third weekend with an estimated $10.4 million, which is a 41 percent drop from last Friday. In comparison, The Dark Knight had a steeper decline (45 percent) but a higher gross ($12.7 million) on its third Friday. Through 15 days, the conclusion to Christopher Nolan's Batman trilogy has earned $328.6 million, and is trailing its predecessor by around $35 million.

Total Recall debuted to an estimated $9.2 million from 3,601 locations on Friday, which is not a very good start by any stretch of the imagination. Among Philip K. Dick adaptations, that's above the much more modest The Adjustment Bureau ($6.73 million) but noticeably behind Minority Report ($11.7 million), which debuted a full ten years ago. It's also a tad above the original Total Recall's $8 million opening day, but with 22 years of ticket price inflation that's nothing to get too excited over. Distributor Sony Pictures is expecting between $25 and $26 million for the three-day frame.

Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days snagged an estimated $5.85 million from 3,391 locations. In comparison, the previous two Wimpy Kid movies opened to $7.4 million and $7.3 million, respectively. Their debuts also came in March, when Friday tends to represent a smaller share of the overall weekend gross for children's movies. For the three-day weekend, the third Wimpy Kid movie could earn as much as $18 million.

Ice Age: Continental Drift dipped 39 percent to $2.48 million for a new total of $125.9 million. It's guaranteed to be the lowest-grossing Ice Age movie at the domestic box office, though that's not a huge issue given its enormous foreign haul ($530 million and counting).

Last week's middling openers took a bit hit on Friday. The Watch fell 57 percent to $1.92 million for a terrible eight-day total of $20.9 million. Step Up Revolution was even worse: the fourth entry in the dance franchise plummeted 64 percent to $1.77 million for an eight-day total of just $19.6 million.

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Related Chart:

Grosses for Friday, August 3, 2012