'Dark Knight' Final Top Ten Weekend Will Be Won by 'Lakeview Terrace'

Fanboys should celebrate as their beloved superhero epic The Dark Knight is poised to end it’s box-office run in the weekend top ten. Next week new releases Eagle Eye, Miracle at St. Anna and Nights in Rodanthe are sure to push Batman into the lower eschelon, but with to date and an additional $850k on Friday and an estimated $3.14 million for the weekend I don’t think Warner Bros. will be complaining. As for the top spot, it appears we won’t be having a repeat performance.

Last week the Coen brothers took the number one spot in something of a surprise turn as Burn After Reading pulled in $19.1 million last weekend, besting Tyler Perry’s The Family that Preys, but it looks like it won’t be besting all of this weekend’s new releases. The Samuel L. Jackson thriller Lakeview Terrace pulled in an estimated $4.7 million on Friday and is expected to take its Friday lead through to the end of the weekend with an anticipated $13.5 million. Burn after Reading, however, is still expected to finish second with $3.42 million on Friday and an anticipated $11.3 million for the weekend.

Dane Cook’s My Best Friend’s Girl despite not being screened for critics and what appears to be a growing hatred for the stand-up comic still managed $2.85 million on Friday and is expected to finish with a meager $7.7 million. Of course, this number is hardly impressive as Fantasy Moguls’ writer Steve Mason points out, the film was tracking at around $10 million for the weekend and he expects the film to struggle to hit $20 million in its theatrical run. Unfortunately Cook’s awful looking film will still beat out the much funnier Ricky Gervais who is toplining his first major film, Ghost Town, which earned a meager $1.65 million on Friday and should only hit the $5.5 million for the weekend. A sad state of affairs indeed.

The animated film Igor hit an estimated $1.9 million on Friday and is expected to earn $6.8 million for the weekend.

Mason also points out the success of Paramount Vantage’s limited platform release The Duchess, which is being shown in only seven theaters but is expected to finish the weekend with an estimated $210,000, which would mean a whopping $30,000/per theater average. To put that into comparison for you, should Lakeview Terrace finish with the estimated $13.5 million for the weekend it would mean only a $5,478/per theater average.

That’s the Friday wrap, Laremy will be here on Sunday with a complete wrap-up of the weekend. Below are the early Friday estimates courtesy of Fantasy Moguls.