LOS ANGELES — The Dark Knight Rises earned a sizable $160 million over the weekend, making it the biggest 2-D opening ever, but falling slightly below expectations following the mass shooting at a Colorado screening of the film.
Warner Bros. said Monday that the final installment of director Christopher Nolan’s Batman trilogy earned $160,887,295.
Besides making The Dark Knight Rises debut the biggest 2-D opening ever — ahead of its 2008 predecessor, The Dark Knight, with $158.4 million — it also gives the movie the third-largest opening after the 3-D films The Avengers, with $207.4 million, and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows — Part 2,
with $169.2 million.
Despite the impressive opening, The Dark Knight Rises fell somewhat below box office expectations — which ranged from $170 million to $200 million — going into the weekend.
“Clearly, The Dark Knight Rises was on everyone’s minds,” said Paul Dergarabedian, an analyst for Hollywood.com. “I think the American public showed they were not going to be scared away from the movie theater by the actions of a lunatic.”
Dergarabedian called the film’s opening “extremely impressive given the tragic events that unfolded on Friday.”
The Dark Knight Rises earned $19.1 million alone from Imax screenings. Tickets for 3-D and Imax films cost a few more dollars than 2-D screenings, netting extra cash at the box office. Movies released in 3-D typically earn under half of their income in 3-D screenings, sometimes as little as a third.
Columbia, 20th Century Fox, Disney, Paramount, Universal and Lionsgate joined Dark Knight Rises distributor Warner Bros. in publicly withholding their usual revenue reports until Monday. They did so out of respect for the victims, survivors and their families after the mass shooting that left 12 dead and 58 wounded at a midnight screening of the movie in Aurora, Colo.
Following behind The Dark Knight Rises in the No. 2 spot was Ice Age: Continental Drift, the animated Fox film that dropped 56 percent in its second weekend, to $20.4 million, and the Columbia superhero reboot The Amazing Spider-Man, which earned $10.9 million during its third weekend at the box office, in the No. 3 position.
MovieStyle, Pages 36 on 07/27/2012