Weekend Box Office: "Knight" must fall...

... but not by much. With $314 million as of Sunday, "The Dark Knight" now has the best 10-day opening streak of all time. It also crossed the $200-million mark faster than any movie before it. The movie's second-weekend gross was $76 million -- another record -- which represented a not-shabby-at-all 52% drop-off from its opening weekend. According to studio reps quoted in the Times, repeat business is high and older audiences are now checking the movie out, drawn by the steady drumbeat of buzz. "Dark Knight" is a full-on phenomenon especially in IMAX theaters, where the weekend's per-theater-average gross was three times that of regular multiplexes, possibly reflecting return Batmaniacs who wanted the full wraparound sucker-punch this time.

In its own way, "Mamma Mia!" is a phenomenon, too -- down a mere 36% its second weekend. I'm guessing that this weekend's paying audience consisted of all the people who A) saw "Dark Knight" weekend one and B) still cared about Meryl Streep and company singing "Dancing Queen" -- a fairly small overlap on the Venn diagram, I'm guessing, but a potent one.

New movies: the raucous Will Ferrell/John C. Reilly stu-com "Step Brothers" made a tidy $30 million, attracting mostly those who saw "Dark Knight" weekend one and didn't care about Meryl Streep and company singing "Dancing Queen." "The X-Files: I Want to Believe" was seen by only those who took the title seriously, coming in fourth overall with a wan $10 million.

Among limited releases, "Brideshead Revisited" averaged $10,000 per theater at 33 theaters -- might have been higher if the reviews had been there. Another newcomer, "American Teen," got an $8,500 PTA in five theaters, and I'm wondering if the film's ad campaign, which merrily disguises the fact that it's, like, a documentary, had anything to do with that, pro or con. ("Teen" opens in the Boston area this Friday.) "Man on Wire," one of my very favorite movies from this year's Sundance, averaged a nifty $24K at two Manhattan theaters; we get the doc about 1974 World Trade Center wirewalker Phillipe Petit on August 8th.

More box office number-massaging from Leonard Klady at Movie City News and Box Office Mojo.