Sunday
27Jul2008
Box Office - 'Dark Knight' to $314 Million in Ten Days
Sunday, July 27, 2008 at 11:00AM
I thought something was amiss when
The Dark Knight only made $23 million on
Friday. That didn't set it up very well for a $75 million weekend, which is what
we predicted on Thursday.
Reader Comments (5)
the worldwide gross for batman begins was about 350 mil and dark knight has already made near that amount of money in this country alone. i wonder when the worldwide box office results will start kicking in. i wouldnt be suprised if it is already over 500 mil worldwide. the dark knight hasnt fully released worldwide yet so when it does there should be a big boom. bty it is almost impossible for any movie to surpass the titanic. i dont know how that movie could have made so much money. when i saw it i thought that it was okay. i guess its one of those freak occurences. LOTR: ROTK is in a distant second place.
Oh, I think the worldwide box office for this will be well past $700 million. As you said, it hasn't really started kicking in yet. Titanic was a complete fluke. I'm not saying $600 million worth of ticket sales is a fluke, but that only one movie - and that movie - is the one to do it.
But when you look at early 1998 (remember, Titanic was released on December 19th of '97), only five movies released before May of that year made over $50 million, and wow, are they ever hall of famers: The Wedding Singer is the best of the bunch, and you've also got City of Angels, U.S. Marshals, The Man in the Iron Mask, and Lost in Space.
I mean, what else were people going to watch? When I say Titanic had no competition, that's true. There were some films around from December 1997, but it already had the advantage of opening later in the month. January's not competitive, one movie from February put up a fight (the Sandler flick), and when U.S. Marshals and The Man in the Iron Mask are the biggest movies in March, you can see what an open road Titanic really had. There's not a movie in its way that made $100 million until Deep Impact in early May.
I just don't think it will ever align like that again: A movie with widespread interest, wins the Oscars two months into its run, the rest of the industry basically shut down for half a year. Look, The Dark Knight will have at least three possible $100 million earners released within a month of its debut, Step Brothers, The Mummy, and Tropic Thunder. It just has more competition to deal with, which is why $600 million, at least in the current $10 per ticket, 4,000 theater environment, just won't happen again.
colin & mike: i was searching the web for info about the dark knight's worldwide take but couldn't find any?? its playing in most of asia, middle east, and europe from thurdays and even before(like thailand which was day and date with the US release)!!
but WB is not releasing anything, i wonder why??
but i can tell you this...i myself watched it twice in 3 days and planning to see it again....i was in Bangkok for the first one and in Dubai the second...
and its breaking every record here..every show is sold out...sometimes for days in advance!! i saw lines of people trying to buy tickets and half of them settle for tomorrow or after tomorrow's shows(with bad seatings)
I assure you DK has surpassed the 500m mark already in its first week..
and it will pass the 1 Bill in a month.
it surely is worth it.
According to Box Office Mojo, the worldwide tally is $355,545,000 after ten days in release. Not quite 500m, and certainly unlikely to hit 1 bill in a month. On the other hand, as the rest of the international markets start showing, it could potentially break 1 billion, or get darned close to it--especially with the ongoing positive word of mouth and repeat viewers--before closing. In any case, with DVD and TV sales in their future, I'm sure Warner Bros. isn't worried about making a profit on Dark Knight. There's plenty of money to be had.
I'm impressed with the editorial restaint in not using a headline that said "The 'Dark Knight' Returns!".