Dark Knight Rises Passes $732M
to Become No. 2 Film of Year

Tuesday, August 7th, 2012 at 7:45am
  • 16 Comments
 
<i>Dark Knight Rises</i> Passes $732M <br />to Become No. 2 Film of Year  

With a global haul of $732 million, The Dark Knight Rises slipped past Ice Age: Continental Drift on Sunday to become the second-highest grossing film of the year. Marvel’s The Avengers is ensconced at No. 1 with $1.46 billion, which naturally means superhero movies have a firm grip on the top two spots of the 2012 worldwide box office.

In North America, the Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures is release has grossed $353.9 million, making it the third-highest grossing film of the year, behind The Avengers (($616.7 million) and Lionsgate’s The Hunger Games ($406.7 million).

Now The Hollywood Reporter wonders whether the conclusion of director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy has what it takes to match the $1 billion earned in 2008 by The Dark Knight. While latest installment trails the second film by $38 million domestically at the same time in its run, the trade paper notes The Dark Knight Rises saw a smaller decline in its third weekend.

However, it’s a different story overseas, where The Dark Knight Rises is outpacing The Dark Knight by about 30 percent, grossing $378.1 million to date.

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  • Yanks5179

    There’s also the factor that it had a lot of oomph taken out of its opening weekend due to the tragedy in Colorado as even studio analysts claimed the box office was softened presumably as a result.  It was never going to bring in Avengers money I don’t think, but it’ll still do well despite the opening weekend having been smaller than expected through no fault of its own.  This just means, as shown by the smaller decline week to week, that those who deferred on opening weekend are getting to the theaters now, so instead of a weekend with 100, then 75, then 50, you’ve got a 75, 75, 50 type deal (all numbers, obviously, are imaginary and for illustration purposes only in my example), same money in most respects, just distributed differently.

  • Duff McWhalen

    Yes, the Aurora incident was probably the biggest piece of news all summer. Unfortunately.

    But yikes, that Avengers success is downright inexplicable and impossile to top regardless.

  • BSmithy

    well, there are more 3-D theatres than IMAX theatres out there. Would be curious to see the numbers adjusted somehow to balance that out…

  • Jack R

    As a kid raised on comic books, I don’t find their meteoric film successes a surprise. They are our modern day mythology.  If I’m surprised by anything,  it’s in Hollywoods inability to get the formula right on a more consistent basis; or to treat the source material as serious (as a rule)  instead of campy..  When has camp worked in this genre since the first season of the Batman TV show in 1966?   Burton’s movies rode the razor’s edge between style and camp… but we all know what happened when Schumacher went all camp… But still, the perception that’s a viable take lingers.. So, we still get something like Green Hornet green lit.. or Rise of the Silver Surfer.. Luckily Marvel is around to do it right.. I hope Warners will become as consistent.. 

  • Zor-El of Argo

    DC needs to follow Marvel’s lead and open thier own studio. That is the best way to both get thier characters on the screen AND maintain creative control.

  • Sam Robards, Comic Fan

    Actually, DC is already owned by a movie studio (Warner Bros.): they just suck at making superhero flicks.

  • Zor-El of Argo

    That’s my point. Marvel is owned by Disney, but still has thier own studio. DC needs a DC studio that is run by people DC hires.

  • CogInTheWheel

    Great news for comics! I completely agree with Jack R.

  • Evan

    Clarification: Warner Bros. has numerous lucrative film properties, which is why they’re not as quick on the draw with turning out more superhero fare.

    Still, mo’ money is mo’ money, so you know they’re discussing the various ways to get a Justice League movie out there.

  • Evan

    Not going to happen. It’s Warner Bros’ call, not DC’s.

  • Robert W

    Thought he colorado tragedy may have kept viewers away from the opening weekend, the movie did not have the pull of Dark Knight with HUGE positive reviews for Ledger (Oscar winning performance in a super hero film) topped with his tragic death brought far more people into the seats than Rises.

    While still a very good movie, Rises also has some rather strange logic in the plot and IMO Bane was not a very compelling villian as well as missing or unexplained use of venom formula.

  • Jeff Spaulding

     Your comment about TDKR lacking a central, brilliant performance comparable to Heath Ledger’s combined with Ledger’s death was eminently logical…

    …and you then ruined that logic by offering up Bane’s “missing or unexplained use of venom formula” as a reason for TDKR’s lesser performance.  Like *anyone* who wasn’t a comics fan (or quite a few who *are*) cared about that.

  • Robert W

    no…i was simply stating it was not as solid a movie as Dark Knight and the lack of the explaination didn’t nessesarily lessened my enjoyment of the film but had me scratching my head.  Since this is a comic site i figured the audience I was addressing would know what i was talking about…the 2nd paragraph was “MY opinion” on the movie itself, not referencing it’s performance.

  • Boilingman2000

    Well said.

  • MikeTheMax

    DC can’t have his own studio. DC is owned by Warner… DC is Warner’s own Comic Book publishing company ;)

  • Cjorg2

     Box Office Mojo disagrees with your opinion.

    “Warner Bros. included some interesting comparison statistics in this weekend’s report. The Dark Knight Rises is currently tracking 31 percent ahead of The Dark Knight across the same markets at this time when using the exchange rates that existed during The Dark Knight’s run. Using today’s more favorable rates, however, The Dark Knight Rises is currently running 49 percent ahead of its predecessor.

    With openings in China and Italy to look forward to, it now looks like a foregone conclusion that The Dark Knight Rises will wind up with over $1 billion worldwide.”

 

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