Yeah, we're not proud of that headline. Dark Knight Rises held the top spot at the box office for the third week in a row.
The Dark Knight Rises took in $36M domestically and $25M internationally to bring its total domestic gross up to $354M and its international gross up to $733M. The $36M take represented a 41% drop from last weekend, but it was still good enough to beat the opening of Total Recall, the remake of the Philip K. Dick classic, which was slightly limp at $26M (we're not proud of that one either). Some are beginning to blame comic book movies for the failure of any other movie to make any money this summer, as Battleship also suffered at the box office while Avengers continued to reign supreme weeks after its debut. For some reason, no one considers that a remake of a movie that people already saw twenty years ago and a movie about a board game were, perhaps, never going to be successful.
As for DKR, its $733M take may not seem so impressive when compared to The Avengers, $1.46B, but, when one considers how little Batman actually appeared in the movie, the things look a little different. Since Batman was only shown for approximately nine minutes in the entire film, that means that moviegoers actually paid $81M per minute to see Christian Bale portray the caped crusader. If, on the other hand, customers really wanted to see Michael Caine portray Alfred the butler, the price was a lot more reasonable, as Caine appeared for 158 of the 164 minutes in the film. In actuality, of course, the reason most people saw the film was not for either actor, but due to Heath Ledger's performance in 2008's The Dark Knight, so most likely left the theater disappointed.