Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight won its third straight weekend at the North American box office, narrowly beating Universal’s vfx-driven adventure sequel The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. Christopher Nolan’s second turn at the Batman franchise took in an estimated $43.8 million to bring its domestic draw closer to the $400 million mark. The most expensive of the three films, the latest Mummy movie had the weakest opening with roughly $42.4 million.

Foreign distribution is proving to be the saving grace for Dragon Emperor, which tops the overseas box office with around $60 million for the weekend. Worldwide, the supernatural thrill ride made more than $100 million in its opening weekend, which may be enough to keep the franchise going, at least on DVD, despite abysmal reviews. To date, the trilogy has earned nearly a billion dollars at the box office worldwide.

Dark Knight is up to roughly $579 million worldwide. The two-and-a-half-hour-long superhero flick continued to sell out shows in its third weekend, especially at IMAX venues. Another film that’s still drawing crowds at IMAX theaters is Warner Bros.’ Journey to the Center of the Earth 3-D, which holds onto the No. 5 spot in its fourth week. Made for around $60 million, the adventure pic starring Brendan Fraser has $84 million worldwide and should enjoy a fairly long run in the IMAX format.

The Sony comedy Step Brothers took in an estimated $16.3 million over the weekend to occupy the No. 3 spot. Universal’s musical Mamma Mia! is fourth with just over $13 million. Featuring songs by ’70s super group ABBA, the adaptation of the Broadway hit has been especially popular overseas, where receipts have added up to more than $140 million to push the worldwide gross beyond $228 million.

The only film opening alongside The Mummy was the Kevin Costner political comedy Swing Vote, which didn’t get much support at the box office. The film took in approximately $6.3 million from 2,846 theaters to debut in the No. 6 spot. At No. 8, Disney/Pixar’s WALL’E has crossed the $200 million mark in its sixth week.

Mark Crilley’s four-volume manga series, Miki Falls, has been picked up by Paramount and Brad Pitt’s Plan B production shingle, reports Variety. First introduced in 2007, the Miki Falls series centers on a lively high school senior named Miki Yoshida who falls for mysterious new student Hiro Sakurai. Miki refuses to take no for an answer, which leads to a surprising revelation about the secretive young man.

Crilley’s oeuvre includes the hugely popular Akiko young adult novels and comic books. Each Miki Falls book centers on a season of the calendar year, beginning with spring. TV writer Sera Gamble (CW’s Supernatural, Eyes) will be adapting the series for Paramount. She was also a finalist on TV’s Project Greenlight show.

Disney has acquired rights to the AIT/Planet Lar graphic novel Monster Attack Network, according The Hollywood Reporter. The studio reportedly sees potential for a feature film franchise along the lines of Sony’s Men in Black, which also started as a comic. Jason Netter, a producer on Universal’s recent comic book adaptation Wanted, will produce the first film through his Kickstart Ent.

Monster Attack Network is written by Marc Bernardin and Adam Freeman, with art by Nima Sorat. The adventure book takes place on the idyllic Pacific island of Lapuatu, which happens to be home to giant monsters. Nate Klinger and his daring team of first-responders at the Monster Attack Network expertly deal with the frequent rampaging-beast-related crises. Their job is further complicated with the arrival of a shady American industrialist and the mysterious, sexy Lapuatuan ex-patriate.

Netter’s Kickstart specializes in bringing comic-book properties to the big screen. For ABC Family, he exec produced a pilot based on ATI’s Nobody by Alex Amado, Sharon Cho, Charlie Adlard, and also has AIT’s Couriers set up at Rogue Pictures. In addition, he is producing an adaptation of Garth Ennis’ The Boys with Original Films for Columbia Pictures.

The O’Connells are back in action to take on a legion of the living dead and other CG beasties in Universal’s The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. The heavily promoted, vfx-driven action-adventure entry is sure to lure moviegoers with the promise of dumb summer fun, but can it stop the box-office behemoth that is Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight?

Brendan Fraser returns for another battle with resurrected evil and is joined this time by Maria Bello in the role played by Rachel Weiss in the first two films, as well as martial arts stars Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh. This third installment is directed by Rob Cohen (Stealth, The Fast and the Furious), taking over for franchise helmer Stephen Sommers, who stayed on as producer. Rhythm & Hues and Digital Domain handled the dragon’s share of the visual effects work.

Fraser, Bello, Li, Yeoh, franchise regular John Hannah and newcomers Luke Ford and Isabella Leong appeared in person for Universal’s Mummy Comic-Con panel on Saturday. Fraser introduced an action sequence involving a pack of fierce, CG-animated yeti, and praised Li’s martial arts skills. ‘The guy can throw a roundhouse kick that only touches your shirt,’ he said. ‘He’s a pro.’ Bello, who is best known for doing serious dramas, said she was trilled to get the call from Cohen because she got into acting to be Indiana Jones and was beginning to think that she would never get the chance to be in a big action-adventure movie.

The only other movie opening wide today is Disney’s political comedy Swing Vote starring Kevin Costner. Timed to ride the coattails of the U.S. Presidential race, the pic stands to rack up respectable numbers for a 2,200-theater rollout. The Dark Knight still holds the highest number of theaters with 4,266, followed by Mummy with 3,759.

Going into its third week, Knight has already earned more than $470 million worldwide. The Christopher Nolan film broke the domestic box office record with its debut and is also the top draw overseas. As the movie rolls out in more territories, receipts from foreign markets are likely to surpass the $342.6 million earned in North America.

Fans of Ubisoft’s bestselling video game franchise Prince of Persia will have to wait a bit longer to see the property brought to the big screen. Originally slated to debut on June 19, 2009, the action-fantasy flick from Disney and producer Jerry Bruckheimer will now bow on Memorial Day weekend, 2010. Daily Variety reports that Disney wants to allow more time for post-production, especially the extensive visual effects work. The switch also dodges the June 26, 2009 release of the DreamWorks/Paramount blockbuster sequel Transformers 2, putting the film up against DreamWorks Animation’s Shrek Goes Fourth instead.

Jake Gyllenhaal has been cast in the lead role of Dastan, a prince in sixth-century Persia who teams up with a feisty, exotic princess to prevent a villainous nobleman from possessing the Sands of Time, a gift from the gods that can reverse time and allow its possessor to rule the world. The female lead is being played by Gemma Arterton, the next Bond girl in Quantum of Solace, which comes out this November. Ben Kingsley and Alfred Molina are also in Prince of Persia.

Mike Newell (Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire) is directing from a screenplay by Doug Miro, Carlo Bernard, Boaz Yakin and game creator Jordan Mechner. Shooting is scheduled underway in Morocco and will move on to London.

Inspired by The Book of One Thousand and One Nights, Mechner teamed with developer Br’derbund to launch the first Prince of Persia Game for PCs and early consoles in 1989. Ubisoft decided to bring the franchise to PlayStation 2, Xbox and Gamecube in 2003 with Sands of Time, which has spawned six sequels.

Cowboy Bebop may be the next anime franchise to be made over as a live-action movie. iF Magazine (www.ifmagazine.com) reports that A Scanner Darkly producer Erwin Stoff is developing a feature based on the property for 20th Century Fox. He apparently spilled the beans while promoting his upcoming NBC drama, Kings, at the network’s TCA presentation. The Bebop project is in the very early stages of development.

‘I have such an enormous admiration for its creators, that our first and foremost concern is going to be a real degree of faithfulness to the tone of the movie, to the mix of genres, and so on and so forth,’ Stoff told iF. ‘When I met with them in Japan, one of the first things that I brought up was the experience that we had on A Scanner Darkly, and how hard we worked to remain faithful to Philip K. Dick, and that was our big concern here.’

Speculation that Keanu Reeves is a frontrunner for role of Spike is supported by Stoff’s long-running relationship with the actor. Reeves starred in A Scanner Darkly, as well as the Stoff-produced pics Sweet November, The Replacements, Constantine, The Lake House, Street Kings and the upcoming remake of The Day the Earth Stood Still. Stoff was also a co-producer on the 1991 comedy Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey, and an exec producer on The Matrix.

Fox has a live-action version of the popular manga and anime property Dragonball set for theatrical release on April 3, 2009. DreamWorks plans to make a stereoscopic 3-D, live-action movie based on Masamune Shirow’s manga/anime series Ghost in the Shell, and actor Leonardo DiCaprio has reportedly teamed with Warner Bros. to produce a live-action version of Katsuhiro Otomo’s anime masterpiece Akira.

Heath Ledger’s portrayal of The Joker contributed greatly to the extraordinary box office success of Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight, but can a super-villain carry an entire film? According to The Hollywood Reporter, Sony Pictures is pondering that question as it begins early development on a Spider-Man spin-off focusing on the Venom character played by actor Topher Grace in Spider-Man 3.

Venom first appeared in Amazing Spider-Man #299 in April of 1988. Created by writer David Michelinie and artist Todd McFarlane, Spider-Man’s menacing doppelganger emerges when Peter Parker’s rival, Eddie Brock, comes in contact an alien symbiote that takes the form of black space goo. Venom has shown up in animated form in a number of TV series, including Spider-Man: The Animated Series, Spider-Man Unlimited and now The Spectacular Spider-Man.

With director Sam Raimi and stars Tobey Maguire and Kirsten Dunst iffy about returning for another round, Sony is desperately seeking a way to keep the Spider-Man franchise alive. Spider-Man 4 is being developed for 2011, but the studio apparently wants to mine the property further. Writer Jacob Estes (Mean Creek) was given the difficult task of weaving a script around the web slingers arch nemesis, but may be replaced by new scribes as the studio looks at a different direction for the pic.

Casting for Venom is up in the air right now. Sony may bring Topher Grace back for the sake of continuity, or get a bigger name on board. Since the alien symbiote can attach itself to any human host, the script may ultimately center on a character other than Eddie Brock.

Having helmed the blockbuster Spider-Man trilogy for Sony Pictures, filmmaker Sam Raimi is set to produce a superhero flick for Disney. The Hollywood Reporter brings word that the house of mouse has picked up The Transplants, a pitch from writers Adam Jay Epstein and Andrew Jacobson (Not Another Teen Movie). Raimi will produce the action-adventure pic through Stars Road Ent., which he founded with Josh Donen.

The Transplants is described as a four-quadrant ensemble superhero story with a comedic bent, but little is known about the plot. Epstein and Jacobson were reportedly developing it as a comic book, but Disney exec Kristin Burr saw feature film potential when Stars Road exec Russell Hollander brought it to the studio.

Raimi, who launched his career with the Evil Dead franchise, has returned to horror in the director’s chair with Drag Me to Hell for Universal. Over the weekend, he thrilled fans by showing footage from the movie at Comic-Con. Epstein and Jacobson most recently wrote the action-comedy Crash Test Dummies for 20th Century Fox’s Barry Josephson, and also directed and co-wrote the upcoming Extreme Movie, a Michael Cera vehicle to be released by the Weinstein’s Dimension.