The Dark Knight Rises Looks to Dominate Weak Weekend Box Office

Nobody seems to be projecting this weekend's box office numbers officially yet, but preliminary figures suggest that The Dark Knight Rises  is on its way to a third consecutive weekend box office win, while Total Recall appears to be underperforming. Based on presale information made available at MovieTickets.com, retailers are reporting that more than 50% of all pre-order tickets for this weekend are still for Christopher Nolan's latest Batman epic, with the closest competitors--Total Recall and the third installment of the Diary of a Wimpy Kid franchise--moving less than 10% of the total sales (and in the case of Wimpy Kid 3, less than 10% of the Dark Knight Rises number). Presale numbers are deceptive, of course, as they tend to be purchased by people with larger groups or who want to go early. This could just mean that The Dark Knight Rises will have a big Friday and then deflate over the weekend, or something similar--but the ratios--56.6% of all tickets sold going to The Dark Knight Rises, with less than 8% going to Total Recall--suggest a trend that's not likely to change. Notably, next week sees the opening of The Bourne Legacy from Universal, which the studio delayed by a week in order to "make way" for The Dark Knight Rises, which they anticipated would probably sustain at least through this weekend. They also probably didn't want to be in competition with Total Recall, as three big action movies all vying for fans' dollars might have seriously hurt at least one of them--and while Total Recall is a remake, it's got positive buzz around it while the new installment of the Bourne franchise feels more like a spinoff than a sequel.