Last weekend The Dark Knight ruled them all as it went on an absolutely phenomenal tear through the record books. That trend continued through the week and right into the new weekend. It now holds the new record for second weekend gross, not to mention fastest to $300 million. There have even been whispers that it has its eyes set on Titanic's titanic take of $600 million. Now that has got to be just a dream, but still, Shrek 2's $441 million is clearly within the realm of possibility. If it overtakes that total, it will be the biggest film of the decade. I must say that this is quite a feat and it is nice to see a film deserving of all the attention getting to hold onto these records. Oh yes, the Bat-flick took more than $75 million this weekend, becoming only the second film to cross $70 million in its second week.
This weekend saw two new films enter the fray, neither of which had a chance to overtake the Christopher Nolan helmed behemoth. The best they could hope for were the scraps left behind by The Dark Knight. When you take a look at what these two films ultimately pulled in, scraps is exactly what they got.
The first new film is Step Brothers. It fared rather well, with a gross north of $30 million. The Will Ferrell comedy proved to be a riot and the perfect antidote to the darkness of The Dark Knight. Sure, the R-rated comedy is not for family friendly audiences and did not tell a particularly compelling story, but I could not help but laugh. The pairing of Ferrell and John C. Reilly is just perfect.
The other film to strike fear in the hearts of moviegoers is The X-Files: I Want to Believe. In addition to being saddled with an absolutely terrible title, it also benefited from practically non-existent promotion from Fox. The film proved to be a disappointment (at least for me), and the fans did not turn out as expected. This one will probably wind up on DVD in pretty short order.
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