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The unlikely franchising of Step Up has surprised everyone in the industry over the past few years. Clearly, a subset of movie goers loves double-jointed, uber-limber dancers defying gravity in unimaginable ways. BOP’s Dan Krovich is one of them and in fact claims that the best usage of 3D special effects to date is not Avatar but instead Step Up 3D. He’s wrong and obviously very strange, but this insight into his madness reflects that awesome dance moves are marketable. At least, they have been for three movies and counting (plus an unrelated pair of instances involving yard-stomping and serve-you-ing).

2006’s Step Up debuted to an impressive $20,659,573 while inflicting Mr. Bland Channing Tatum on the world. 2008’s Step Up 2 the Streets overcame an abominable title on its way to a solid $18,908,826 opening weekend. Despite the box office inflation of 3D ticket pricing, Mr. Krovich’s beloved Step Up 3D only managed $15,812,311, which indicated that people can only watch so much dancing before their self-esteem kicks in.

Step Up Revolution confirmed this with what I believe to be a franchise killing $11,731,708. Monday’s follow-up performance of $1,473,125 will not cause any Summit Entertainment executives to start jumping out of buildings, and not just because the company has been swallowed by Lionsgate. The frugal $33 million budget is unlikely to be recouped domestically but given the (shockingly) lucrative nature of the franchise to date, everyone was playing with house money on this one anyway. With only $13,204,833, Step Up 4 hardly qualifies as a revolution, though.

Given the relatively insignificant new titles in release, we are again left with the most depressing box office conversation possible this week. The Dark Knight Rises earned $62,101,451 over the weekend, which is right in line with my stated projection from last Friday. My exact quote was “If anything, the current data pointedly suggests that a sub-$65 million weekend is in the offing. Assuming this is true, the movie will be in the $285-$290 million range after Sunday.”

Of course, the manner in which The Dark Knight Rises acquired its weekend total of $62,101,451 was unexpectedly adventurous. I also mentioned “If the [Friday] number is under $18.6 million, Warner Bros. has a lot of problems with this movie, at least domestically.” I had expected a 41% expansion from Thursday to Friday if not a bit higher. Instead, the movie only grew 34% to $17,734,545.

On Saturday, the news was much sunnier as it increased 39% to $24,712,417. The Dark Knight’s second weekend increase from Friday to Saturday was only 22%. Even better, The Dark Knight Rises had a better Thursday to Saturday expansion of 87.2% while The Dark Knight managed 71.7%. Yes, The Dark Knight Rises was dealing with smaller numbers so its growth was easier but any good news for Batman 7 is welcome by now.

Sunday’s results were largely positive as well. Yes, The Dark Knight Rises was overestimated by $2 million, but the movie dropped only 20% to $19,654,489. Given that The Dark Knight fell 16% and had much more box office momentum at the time, I would describe that $19.6 million as fairly solid, all things considered. The $62.1 million overall weekend total is impressive given the lackluster Friday. The question becomes whether this is an aberration or representative of relaxed customer concerns over the events of Aurora, Colorado.

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