Weekend Box Office: Total Recall a big hit. In 1990.
One of the advantages of opening a big movie like The Dark Knight Rises late in the summer is that it has no challengers—no Avengers to siphon away the superhero dollar and nothing opening but misbegotten projects like The Watch and Total Recall, which don’t have the muscle to open earlier in the season. Despite replacing Arnold Schwarzenegger with a roughly equivalent box-office force in Colin Farrell, Total Recall didn’t put up much of a fight against Batman, less Bane than Calendar Man. At $26 million, it was a full $10 million behind The Dark Knight Rises and over $100 million away from its extravagant budget, which was mostly used to pay down Farrell’s student loans. Also opening well short of expectations was Diary Of A Wimpy Kid: Dog Days, the third in a mildly entertaining comedy series and by far the weakest opener, taking $14.7 million where earlier entries made $22 and $23 million. The good news for Fox is that it only cost $22 million, so more entries may be on the way.