Tropic Thunder is still thundering at the box office!

The surprise is not that Tropic Thunder is #1, is that "The Dark Knight" went from 4 to 3 in a comeback! Can it become #1 in the all time list?

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Action film parody "Tropic Thunder" held onto the top spot at the North American box office for a third straight week as the summer moviegoing season drew to a close, Hollywood studios reported on Sunday.

Paramount Pictures' farcical combat movie within a comedy, starring Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr. and Jack Black, sold an estimated $11.5 million in U.S. and Canadian tickets Friday through Sunday to bring its three-week tally to $83.8 million.

Its biggest competition came from a real action flick, the sci-fi thriller "Babylon A.D." from 20th Century Fox starring Vin Diesel, which grossed an estimated $9.7 million in its first weekend to land at No. 2.

Blockbuster Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" climbed a notch up the box office chart to No. 3 with weekend receipts of nearly $8.8 million, pushing its cumulative domestic haul past the $500 million mark in its seventh week of release.

"Dark Knight," a Warner Bros, release, stands as the second-highest-grossing domestic film of all time, behind "Titanic."

The U.S. Labor Day holiday on Monday marks the official conclusion to Hollywood's 18-week summer film season, which is expected to end with roughly $4 billion in domestic box office receipts overall.

Paramount is a unit of Viacom Inc, Fox is a division of News Corp and Warner Bros. belongs to Time Warner Inc.

"Tropic Thunder" still thundering!

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Action movie spoof "Tropic Thunder" commanded the No. 1 spot at North American box offices for the second straight week, narrowly conquering sorority-themed college romp "House Bunny."

"Tropic Thunder," which stars Robert Downey Jr, Ben Stiller and Jack Black, had an estimated weekend total of $16.1 million at U.S. and Canadian theaters, bringing its total domestic take to $65.7 million, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

Downey, Stiller and Black have won much laughter from audiences playing a group of self-absorbed Hollywood actors caught up in a real-life battle with narco-terrorists while filming a war movie in Southeast Asia. The film was directed, co-written and co-produced by Stiller and was distributed by Paramount Pictures, a unit of Viacom Inc.

"House Bunny," from Sony Corp's Columbia Pictures unit, debuted at No. 2 with ticket sales of $15.1 million.

Written by Kirsten Smith and Karen McCullah Lutz of "Legally Blonde" fame, the comedy stars Anna Faris as a former Playboy playmate who becomes house mother to socially inept sorority sisters after being cast out of the Playboy mansion.

In third place was "Death Race" with a weekend tally of $12.3 million, according to a spokesman for Universal Pictures, a unit of General Electric Co's NBC Universal.

The film, loosely based on 1975's "Death Race 2000," stars Jason Statham as a former Nascar champion and ex-con who is framed for his wife's murder and forced by a prison warden to compete in a brutal winner-take-all race of weaponized monster cars. Joan Allen stars as the icy prison warden.

The blockbuster Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" slipped from last week's No. 2 slot to No. 4 as ticket sales tumbled 37 percent to $10.3 million.

"The Dark Knight," a Warner Bros release, has amassed more than $489 million in six weeks of domestic ticket sales and is the second-highest grossing domestic film ever behind "Titanic."

Warner Bros' animated "Star Wars" movie, "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," rounded out the top five with an estimated $5.7 million in North American ticket sales.

"Pineapple Express," a stoner comedy named for a strong type of marijuana, stoked box offices with $5.6 million in sales in its third week, while the American remake of the South Korean horror film "Mirrors," starring Kiefer Sutherland of the hit TV series "24," grossed $4.9 million in its second week to land in the No. 7 spot.

"The Longshots," based on the real-life story of 11-year-old Jasmine Plummer -- the first girl to compete as a quarterback in the Super Bowl of Pop Warner football, squeaked past "Mamma Mia!" in its first week in theaters with $4.3 million in ticket sales.

Lumbering in at No. 10 with $4.1 million in sales was Universal's "The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor."

And the box office champion this week is...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Big-screen Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. scored his second No. 1 movie of the summer on Sunday as Hollywood spoof "Tropic Thunder" ended the month-long reign of "The Dark Knight" atop the North American box office.
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"Tropic Thunder," a farcical combat movie within a comedy that also stars Ben Stiller and Jack Black, grossed $26 million during its first weekend in U.S. and Canadian theaters, bringing its five-day estimated total from Wednesday's opening to $37 million.

Downey who appears in the film in blackface, portraying a white actor playing a black action hero, also starred in the summer's first chart-topping movie, Marvel Studios' "Iron Man."

The superhero drama, which like "Tropic Thunder" was distributed by Viacom Inc's Paramount Pictures, grossed nearly $99 million its opening weekend in May.

In "Tropic Thunder," Downey, Stiller and Black star as self-absorbed Hollywood actors caught up in a real-life battle with narco-terrorists while filming a war movie in Southeast Asia. The film was directed, co-written and co-produced by Stiller.

The blockbuster Batman sequel "The Dark Knight" slipped to No. 2 with $16.8 million in ticket sales in its fifth weekend of release but broke yet another commercial barrier along the way by becoming the second-highest-grossing film ever, according to box office tracking service Media By Numbers.

BATMAN FINDS NEW PERCH

"The Dark Knight," starring Christian Bale as Batman and the late Heath Ledger as the villainous Joker in his last completed role, has now amassed more than $471 million in domestic ticket sales. That tally ranks second only to the $601 million grossed by all-time champion "Titanic."

Adjusted for inflation, though, the 1997 blockbuster stands at No. 6 in the record books, far behind "Gone with the Wind" at $1.4 billion in today's dollars, according to tracking firm Box Office Mojo.

The Batman sequel surpassed the original "Star Wars" movie -- $461 million -- as No. 2 on the all-time box office list on Saturday. Distributor Warner Bros., a unit of Time Warner Inc, has said it expects "Dark Knight" to end up with about $520 million in domestic receipts.

The last movie to remain at No. 1 for four straight weekends was "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King," in 2003-2004, Box Office Mojo said.

The latest addition to the "Star Wars" franchise, a newly animated tale called "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," opened at No. 3 this weekend with an estimated $15.5 million in North American ticket sales. The film is designed in part as a launch pad for a new TV series of the same name coming to the Cartoon Network.

The weekend's only other wide release, an American remake of the South Korean horror film "Mirrors," starring Kiefer Sutherland of the hit TV series "24," grossed $11.1 million to land at No. 4.

Last week's runner-up at the box office, the stoner comedy "Pineapple Express," fell to No. 5 with $10 million, a drop-off of nearly 60 percent from its opening tally.

Woody Allen's latest offering, the well-reviewed romantic comedy "Vicky Cristina Barcelona," starring Javier Bardem and Penelope Cruz, opened in just under 700 theaters nationwide to gross $3.7 million and round out this weekend's top 10.

Domestic box office receipts overall this weekend stood at $126 million, down 3 percent from the same weekend a year ago.