Why Sharp Friday Drop? THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Box Office

The Dark Knight Rises weekend box office. (Photo: The masked mad terrorist / anarchist Bane, Tom Hardy.) Christopher Nolan’s "Batman 3" movie, The Dark Knight Rises, scored an estimated $160-162m at 4,404 North American theaters this July 20-22 weekend, including $30.6m from Thursday midnight screenings. That’s about $20m-$25m less than early Friday estimates indicated. It’s unclear whether or not the Colorado shooting that left 12 people dead and 60 injured affected The Dark Knight Rises‘ box-office take.

Following the tragedy, TDKR distributor Warner Bros. announced it wouldn’t release any box-office information over the weekend. Every major Hollywood studio has since followed suit. Additionally, Rentrak, the organization that keeps track of box-office figures, declined to divulge worldwide box-office estimates on Sunday. The $160-162m figure was given out by "box-office insiders." Weekend box-office actuals will be released on Monday as usual. [See also: Christopher Nolan statement on behalf of The Dark Knight Rises' cast and crew and Christian Bale statement regarding the shooting.]

The Dark Knight Rises weekend box office: 2D record broken only if inflation ignored

If the weekend estimate is accurate, The Dark Knight Rises is third among the biggest opening weekends ever in the US/Canada, trailing only Joss Whedon / Chris Hemsworth / Chris Evans’ The Avengers‘ $207.43m and David Yates / Daniel Radcliffe / Ralph Fiennes’ Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2‘s $169.18m. Curiously, three of the five highest-grossing opening weekends in North America are 2012 releases: besides The Avengers and The Dark Knight Rises, there’s Gary Ross / Jennifer Lawrence / Josh Hutcherson’s The Hunger Games at no. 4. [See also: The Dark Knight Rises midnight box-office record and The Dark Knight Rises Friday box office.]

Since both The Avengers and Deathly Hallows 2 are 3D releases, The Dark Knight Rises has been heralded as the 2D movie champ on the domestic, opening-weekend box-office chart. TDKR‘s predecessor was Christopher Nolan’s own "Batman 2" movie, The Dark Knight, which grossed $158.41m in July 2008.

The Dark Knight Rises vs. The Dark Knight: ticket sales

However, if higher ticket prices are factored in (and TDKR box-office estimates are correct), The Dark Knight easily remains on top: its $158.41m opening-weekend take would translate into approximately $174.7m today. In other words, if July 20-22, 2012, weekend estimates accurate The Dark Knight sold many more tickets than The Dark Knight Rises back in summer 2008 — even without taking into account TDKR‘s IMAX surcharges.

Now, following the Colorado massacre some have gotten up on their personal soapboxes to claim that box-office figures aren’t important and why should anyone emphasize or even bother reporting them? After all, what truly matters is the quality of the movies.

If you think that way, you don’t live on planet Earth. The Dark Knight Rises wasn’t made because Warner Bros. or Christopher Nolan or Jonathan Nolan or Christian Bale wanted to make the greatest movie epic of all time. The only reason The Dark Knight Rises ultimately got made was to make money. Lots of money. Else, no matter how brilliant Christopher Nolan’s vision might have been, he would never, ever have gotten (an estimated) $250m — not including another $100m+ in marketing / distribution expenses — to make his film.

Commercial movies aren’t made to be great works of art. They’re made so they’ll appeal to the largest number of moviegoers (mostly teenagers and parents with little children) and thus bring in the most revenues. That’s fact. And that has always been so, even before giant multinational conglomerates took over Hollywood. Without the lure of huge box-office grosses, movies such as The Dark Knight Rises would never get made and, in fact, Hollywood itself would no longer exist as a filmmaking factory. Box-office revenues (and ensuing ancillary income) — not great movies — are the raison d’être of the film industry.

Directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan, The Dark Knight Rises stars Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne / Batman, Anne Hathaway as Selina Kyle / Catwoman, Tom Hardy as the mad terrorist Bane, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate, plus Michael Caine, Gary Oldman, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Morgan Freeman, and Matthew Modine.

“THE DARK KNIGHT RISES Weekend Box Office” / Tom Hardy as Bane picture: Ron Phillips / Warner Bros.