According to Boxofficemojo.com, last weekend's top film, Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Tropic Thunder, retained its number-one status over the past three days. It is estimated to have grossed $16 million at domestic theaters as of this writing. Of course, things could change, since the film currently in second place, Sony's (NYSE: SNE) The House Bunny, is only about a million dollars behind the Ben Stiller comedy. I have a feeling, though, that Thunder will keep its top spot. It seems to have some decent momentum behind it.
Death Race, released by General Electric's (NYSE: GE) Universal, came in third with about $12 million. Not too exciting of a debut. This is the kind of the film that ideally should have come out at the beginning of the summer box-office season. Since I haven't seen it, I can't say whether it would have been appropriate to have released it at that time (i.e., maybe it didn't come out that great and needed to be dumped in the latter days of August).
Dropping two places to number four is everybody's favorite superhero these days, Time Warner's (NYSE: TWX) The Dark Knight. The movie has roughly $489 million in total to its credit. It won't reach the heights of Titanic, but it will pass $500 million. Not too shabby for the Bat. I'm sure the studio division at Time Warner is working overdrive right now to construct a competent, cohesive marketing campaign to ensure that the home-video release adequately takes advantage of the incredible theatrical success that Knight has generated. They really have a big property on their hands with this one.
While Time Warner nailed it with its second film in the Batman reboot, it didn't do so well with Star Wars: The Clone War. I thought this film would be a big hit. It isn't. It dropped two places to fifth, and it only has around $25 million in terms of total gross. I believed it was capable of much more than that. Apparently telling a Star Wars story via frames of animation doesn't excite a whole lot of people.
Thing to remember here, though, is that the movie serves as a big advertisement for the TV series, which will be broadcast on Time Warner's Cartoon Network in the fall. So, while the grosses have fallen flat, hopefully the project fulfilled some kind of purpose for shareholders of the media company (who are always in the mood for a little synergy).
The summer is winding down, my friends. The grosses will be lower now, but the movie industry continues to plug along as it bides time before the next busy season -- the holiday period from Thanksgiving to New Year's.
Disclosure: I own shares of GE; positions can change at any time.
Struggling Playboy outsources business ops
J. Crew earnings preview: A strong Q3 all buttoned up?
Twitter to make acquisitions, generate revenue in 2010
