Box Office News: ‘The Bourne Legacy’ Pushes ‘The Dark Knight Rises’ Out of Top Spot

Submitted by BrianTT on August 13, 2012 - 9:25am

CHICAGO – “The Bourne Legacy” may have under-performed a bit but the Jeremy Renner “side-quel” to the Matt Damon series brought in enough cash to push “The Dark Knight Rises” from the top spot at the box office while Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis had a strong debut with the political comedy “The Campaign.” Finally, “Hope Springs” had a reasonable opening although the story here is more likely to be in the coming weeks as films with older-skewing audiences usually hang around the top ten much longer.

For comparison, “The Bourne Legacy” opened with significantly less than 2004’s “The Bourne Supremacy” ($52.5 million) and 2007’s “The Bourne Ultimatum” ($69.3 million) although does compare nicely with the first Damon-Bourne film, 2002’s “The Bourne Identity” ($27.1 million). Jeremy Renner certainly isn’t a proven box office lead and so it’s hard to say how happy Universal should be with this opening number. Compared to Damon’s films, it’s down (and the ‘B’ CinemaScore doesn’t bode well for long legs), but Renner certainly isn’t the star that Damon was when those second two films were released. Yet.

“The Campaign” performed well (although a ‘B-’ CinemaScore could mean steep drops) although it was down from the Ferrell brand, which usually notches over $30 million for an opening weekend (“The Other Guys,” “Step Brothers,” and even “Blades of Glory” all made more in their opening frames).

ESTIMATED TOTALS
1. The Bourne Legacy — $40.3 million — new
2. The Campaign — $27.4 million — new
3. The Dark Knight Rises — $19.5 million — down 45% — $390.1 million total
4. Hope Springs — $15.6 million — $20.1 million
5. Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Dog Days — $8.2 million — down 44% — $30.6 million
6. Total Recall — $8.1 million — down 68% — $44.2 million
7. Ice Age: Continental Drift — $6.8 million — down 22% — $144 million
8. Ted — $3.3 million — down 42% — $209.9 million
9. Step Up: Revolution — $2.9 million — down 52% — $30.2 million
10. The Watch — $2.2 million — down 66% — $31.4 million