The last weekend of summer blockbuster has come and gone, and there’s yet another casualty to add to the likes of The X-Files, The Wachowski Brothers and Eddie Murphy. This time? It’s Vin Diesel, with his universally derided Babylon A.D. scraping home with just $9.7m. That it didn’t even break $10m doesn’t bode well for Diesel’s future, and it’s unsurprising that he’s heading back to The Fast and the Furious and Riddick franchises for shelter.

What also happened this weekend was that The Dark Knight became the second film in history to break half a billion dollars at the US box office. It finished third for the weekend, behind Mr Diesel, with and added $8.7m bringing its total to over $502m. Staggering. It may yet get to $525m before it heads to DVD in December.

The weekend box office was won by Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder, which is now up to $83m, and should cross the $100m mark in due course. Ron’ll be here with his full box office analysis later in the week, but for now, here’s the weekend’s top 5…

1. Tropic Thunder: $11.5m ($83.8m total)
2. Babylon A.D.: $9.7m (opening)
3. The Dark Knight: $8.75m ($502.4m total)
4. The House Bunny: $8.3m ($27.8m total)
5. Traitor: $7.9m ($9.4m total)

Incidentally, Disaster Movie bombed into seventh place on its opening with $6.17m. Can we end these films now please?