'Thunder' Continues Its Box-Office Reign; 'The Rocker' Tanks

Another weekend down, another abysmal stretch at the American box office in August (a terrible month for movies). “Tropic Thunder” fought for its top spot against four films in wide release and yet again came out on top. ‘Thunder’ barely triumphed over the new Anna Faris “comedy,” “The House Bunny,” with $16.1 million to ‘Bunny’s’ $15.1, and finished ahead of “Death Race” by about three million dollars.

Former Limp Bizkit front man, Fred Durst’s new inspirational sports film based on a true story, “The Longshots” ended up in eighth place, but the real limp biscuit this weekend was the rock and roll comedy, “The Rocker.” The Rainn Wilson vehicle opened in 2784 theaters to a shameful $2,750,000 not even breaking the top 10 in 12th place. It opened on the previous Wednesday, and it’s five day total is an embarrassing $3,800,000.

Even Woody Allen’s, low budget low income, comedy, “Vicky Cristina Barcelona” beat the film and it is in it’s second week of release and is only playing in 600 theaters. Opening in limited release was the Sundance sensation, “Hamlet 2.” The film opened in 100 theaters to decent, but not stellar reviews and brought in $435,000 dollars domestically.

Box office bully, “The Dark Knight” dropped to number four this weekend with $10,305,000. The film has been out in the U.S. for six weeks and has taken in almost $490 million dollars making it the second most successful movie ever released domestically. ‘TDK’ has finally been released world wide after having been opened sparingly in many foreign markets. So far, ‘Batman’ has raked in over $870 million dollars world wide making it the 13th most successful movie ever made worldwide. It just opened this weekend in a few more foreign markets, so it probably has a shot at making it into the low to middle $900 million dollar area. Only time will tell.

In what should be seen as cautiously optimistic news for ‘Thunder,’ the film only fell off 38% in its second week and its box-office grand total is $65,668,000. It’s still less than half then its purportedly $130 million dollar budget, but the Hollywood film has yet to open wide internationally. Maybe Stiller still has a shot at breaking even.