It took a trio of comedy veterans to finally shake Batman from his Number One position at the box office this weekend. The R-rated comedy Tropic Thunder, starring Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black and Ben Stiller made a first place winning $26 million this weekend, bringing its total to $37 million since its Wednesday debut.

 But shed no tears for The Dark Knight, even though it placed second this weekend, the additional $16.8 million it brought in over the weekend makes it the second highest domestic grossing film ever, only behind Titanic. It is now $10 million ahead of the former second place top grosser, the original Star Wars.

 The Dark Knight beat Star Wars this weekend in more ways than one. The animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars from George Lucas finished third, in its first weekend, making an estimated$15.5 million.

 Fox’s frightening Mirrors debuted fourth, making a little over $11.1 million. Oddly enough, it skewed female, which is uncommon for a horror flick. 56% of  its audience was female, perhaps because of the attraction of star Keiffer Sutherland. Whatever the case, it skewed young: 60% of its viewers were under 25.

 Pineapple Express, which was Number Two last weekend and almost overtook The Dark Kinght, dropped 57% and earned about  $10 million to finish fifth. Although it took a big hit from Tropic Thunder, since the two films appeal to the same demos, it has now earned $62.9 million since it debuted ten days ago, which is not bad considering it only cost about $27 million to make.

 Movie studios are breathing a sigh of relief that they made any money this weekend at all - millions stayed home Saturday night to see if Michael Phelps would be able to get his eighth gold medal. As a result, NBC had its best Saturday numbers since 1990, with an estimated 31.1 million viewers.