That said, The Dark Knight Rises led a weekend that is down double digits from last year with $64.1 million.  While that number is noticeably off from its predecessor’s $75.2 million second weekend, this is still very respectable as it qualifies as the sixth biggest week two intro on record.  

The Dark Knight Rises’ global total now stands at $465 million with $243.1 million of that coming from domestic markets.  As for the sudden surge in overall revenue, that is because the rest of the world is finally getting a taste of the final Christopher Nolan Batman movie and those figures are untainted by the fear instilled in American moviegoers from the Aurora shootings.  Expect the foreign numbers to really behave like the Colorado theater massacre never happened.

In regards to the newbies, The Watch and Step Up Revolution did not turn it around at all.  Akiva Schaffer’s The Watch really disappointed both critically and at the box office ($13 million) and it might have actually had permanent damage on Ben Stiller’s credibility as he was seen as the front-man for all this.  It is hard to imagine Vaughn and Hill will see any real impact on their star power especially because they both have some hotly anticipated upcoming projects in The Internship and the 21 Jump Street sequel respectively.

The rest of the field just dropped the normal amount and if anything they dropped slightly below that level as many people who skipped theater-going last week showed up to see the movies they would have seen last week.  For example, we are seeing surprising strength in the family offerings Brave and Ice Age 4 which dropped less than 35% each.

It turns out that even my estimates were not low enough as the movie only banked $18 million on Friday, suggesting a $50-55 million weekend.  Judging from the amount of interest and deterioration right now, suggesting $55 million might even be optimistic but that is what the industry believes right now.  That would signal a massive 66% drop-off week-to-week from the $160.9 million debut The Dark Knight Rises saw opening weekend.  For comparative purposes, that number is around $20 million lower than what the film’s direct predecessor did four years ago in its second week of release.

Much of this can be attributed to a perceived quality gap between the two offerings as well.  Many think that DKR lacks the masterpiece moxy to propel itself into the same stratosphere as The Avengers, The Dark Knight, and Avatar (all $500+ million films) which is partially a lesson in the limits of marketing hype.

Outside of The Dark Knight Rises’ second week, there were two new entrants via The Watch and Step Up Revolution.  The pair found only $4.5 million and $4.9 million on Friday respectively, setting up some lackluster weekend numbers in the low-teens.

The surprise of the pair comes with The Watch as it has three well-known comic actors in Vince Vaughn, Ben Stiller, and Jonah Hill.  Unfortunately, reviews were some of the worst we have seen all year and in the age of social media where people catch onto a stinker fast, a studio might as well not release a movie if it is terrible because the box office will suffer dramatically for it.  The movie reportedly cost $68 million to make.

I would just like to point out that all these failings are a bit of a knock on overall quality.  Once August’s major releases hit the theaters (especially The Bourne Legacy) we will know what we are dealing with in terms of the kind of trouble that the industry is in as a whole.  On the bright side of things, returning features from before The Dark Knight Rises’ release dropped off at a normal pace suggesting that fear is not snowballing like the DKR Friday number might imply.

The Dark Knight Rises currently stands at $392.3 million worldwide with $243 million of that coming from domestic markets.