| In spite of all those ”The Mummy Will Put the Wraps on Dark Knight” headlines in trade papers, Christopher Nolan’s second Batman movie eked out a narrow victory over its strongest challenger yet, earning an estimated $43.8 million to The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor’s $42.45 million. The Dark Knight dropped just 41.7% in its third frame, while still averaging a potent $10,267 per venue. Nolan’s new Gotham City saga has now earned some $395 million, and should pass $400 million on Monday. While it appears unlikely that The Dark Knight will top Titanic’s mammoth $600 million cumulative, it now appears that it will end up over $500 million as the second highest-grossing film of all time and will almost certainly be the biggest box office hit of 2008. Rob Cohen’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor added some top Asian stars (Jet Li, Michele Yeoh) to the modern Mummy film’s effects-heavy, Indiana Jones-light adventure film formula, but failed to match the opening numbers of either of the first two films in the franchise. In general bad reviews don’t matter much in opening of a big action film, but combined with mediocre word-of-mouth, they can be deadly in subsequent weekends, and the new Mummy film’s notices were truly wretched—only one out of ten was positive according to Rotten Tomatoes. With no 3D scenes or other gimmicks to keep audiences interested (as is the case in Brendan Fraser’s other cheesy summer release, Journey to the Center of the Earth, which remained at #5), look for a substantial second week decline for new Mummy movie. | (http://www.icv2.com/images/13025april-dark-knightlg.jpg) |