This weekend, out of respect for the victims and those affected by the tragic events in Aurora, Colorado this past weekend, Warner Bros. chose not to release the official day-to-day box office numbers for Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises. It was a smart move by the studio, as it would have been classless to boast blockbuster numbers in the wake of such a tragedy while people were still trying to recover from the shock of the events. Now, however, WB has sent out the figures and as you probably could have guessed, Batman was the leader of the pack.
According to one of the reporters over at Variety, The Dark Knight Rises pulled in $160.89 million over the three day weekend domestically. While the numbers didn't quite reach the record set by The Avengers a couple months ago - the Marvel film managed to make an astonishing $207 million in its US debut - it does put the film at number three on the all-time top opening weekends list, just behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2 (which made $169.2 million when it first premiered in the states). The film also managed to push its predecessor, The Dark Knight, to fourth place, pulling just ahead of that release's $158.4 million take in 2008.
While The Dark Knight Rises may not be the biggest opening weekend of all time, it is the biggest opening for a non-3D movie. It's likely that the rest of this past weekend's top 10 will be announced soon, so stay tuned to this page and we will update it with the latest numbers.
UPDATE: As predicted, the full box office report is now online. Check out the top 10 below:
Eric Eisenberg is the Assistant Managing Editor at CinemaBlend. After graduating Boston University and earning a bachelor’s degree in journalism, he took a part-time job as a staff writer for CinemaBlend, and after six months was offered the opportunity to move to Los Angeles and take on a newly created West Coast Editor position. Over a decade later, he's continuing to advance his interests and expertise. In addition to conducting filmmaker interviews and contributing to the news and feature content of the site, Eric also oversees the Movie Reviews section, writes the the weekend box office report (published Sundays), and is the site's resident Stephen King expert. He has two King-related columns.
