Even though Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight” took third yesterday with $5 million at 3,590 sites, the superhero pic only weathered a 35% dip in its fifth Friday. Having accumulated $459.7 million to date, “Dark Knight” is on the verge of overtaking 1977’s “Star Wars” and its 1997 reissue on the all-time domestic grossers list.

I sense a disturbance in the Force: It’s a terrible weekend to be George Lucas. “The Dark Knight” is sure to pass “Star Wars” for the No. 2 spot on the list of biggest box office hits of all time (unadjusted for inflation). And perhaps worse, there’s a new “Star Wars” movie, and no one cares.

“Star Wars: The Clone Wars,” which is a continuation of an earlier animated TV series, is basically just a 98-minute trailer for the autumn launch of a new series on the Cartoon Network.

I know a lot of parents who fret about the wholesale takeover of our kids’ imaginations by franchises like “Star Wars.” They fear that the pop culture is somehow corroding our offsprings’ ability to turbo-drive their own imagination. I’d like to think most kids are more inventive than that.

‘Clone Wars’ features familiar characters sculpted in computers to look almost like wooden puppets, with their design owing in part to Genndy Tartakovsky’s 2-D animation of the previous Star Wars: Clone Wars TV series on Cartoon Network.

Only Samuel L. Jackson (Mace Windu), Christopher Lee (Count Dooku) and Anthony Daniels (C-3PO) reprise their characters from George Lucas’ live-action Star Wars films; the rest are played by relative unknowns, taking over for their more famous counterparts.

Producer George Lucas said at a news conference: “At the end of Episode II, [Anakin's] kind of a wild child, and he and Obi-Wan don’t get along. So the idea was to see how they become friends, how they become partners, how they become a team.”

The upcoming Clone Wars movie centers on the Jedi Knights as they struggle to maintain order and restore peace. Anakin Skywalker and his Padawan learner find themselves on a mission with far-reaching consequences, while Obi-Wan Kenobi and Yoda lead the clone army in a valiant effort to resist the forces of the dark side.