Dark Knight Dominant; Final Friday Box Office Less Competitive

Earlier in the day, Deadline and The Hollywood Reporter were both reporting that the weekend’s box office would be neck and neck, with Total Recall starting strong but losing steam over the weekend to come in about a million dollars behind The Dark Knight Rises.In fact, it now looks as though both Total Recall and Diary of a Wimpy Kid 3: Dog Days, which will be the #3 film at this weekend’s box office, are making somewhat less money than expected while The Dark Knight Rises is staying on pace for its maximum original projection. This means that instead of a $1 million difference, it appears as though Christopher Nolan’s Batman finale will bring in about $34 million this weekend to Total Recall‘s $26 million. Wimpy Kid is looking to make in the neighborhood of $15 million to $20 million.While the weekend-long numbers are (as we’ve seen today) subject to change on a whim if one day’s number isn’t what they expect, the Friday numbers are more or less set in stone at this point, with The Dark Knight Rises being the only one of the three films to break $10 million.Deadline also reminds readers that there’s a certain element of depressed numbers at play here, as the Summer Olympics traditionally take a bite out of weekend theater traffic–but that’s a difficult number to calculate with any accuracy.The Dark Knight Rises is currently sitting at the year’s number three spot for domestic box office, behind The Avengers and The Hunger Games, and has been consistently setting records for box office draw on a non-3D movie. It will likely cross $350 million at the domestic box office by the end of the weekend and may overtake The Hunger Games (which took in $406.3 million) by the end of next weekend.