Monday, July 28, 2008 at 11:36AM Will 'The Dark Knight' Ever Catch 'Titanic'?
On the one hand, it's tough to argue with that logic. There's never been a movie with such a head start before. Before next weekend starts, The Dark Knight should be sitting at around $355 million or so, making it the 12th or 13th biggest movie ever in 14 days. There is very little doubt, in fact, that The Dark Knight will be firmly planted in the top ten highest grossing films of all time by this time next week, maybe as high as number seven.
But the post-$400 million terrain is a wasteland. Shrek 2 earned $441 million in domestic coin, and based on one theatrical run (as opposed to the several Star Wars has had), that's the closest anyone has ever come to reaching Titanic: $160 million away. The Dark Knight will take over the third place spot on the all-time list by August 15th, I should imagine, but just track our imaginary weekends and you'll see why that's the biggest reason Titanic is going to be so hard to supplant.
The film lost 52% of its opening weekend crowd in week two, which is about average for any movie. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest more or less mirrors that percentage, and it's in the $400 million club. It is worth pointing out, though, that neither Star Wars Episode I or Shrek 2 ever had a weekend when it made 50% less than the previous weekend, according to Box Office Mojo. But for the sake of comparison, we'll just use the numbers for Pirates and apply them to The Dark Knight in our experiment.
Fitting The Dark Knight with a box office tumble of 43% for this upcoming weekend gives us a three-day total of $43 million. When the following weekend hits, we'll factor in an audience loss of 41%, or $25 million. As for the weeks in between those weekends, we're sticking with our $355 million projection through this Thursday if that's OK with you; that's $41 million in four days, or a little more than a 45% decrease from the in-week totals from the week one. That again runs pretty close to the week two production of the second Pirates movie.
So after the third weekend, you can add another $84 million to the film's current total, or a hair beneath $400 million. We're going to round that up: $400 million in seventeen days.
Let's use the Pirates percentage again in week four: A 46% decline during the week from the previous Monday - Friday, and a 41.5% drop on the weekend. We'd have $421 million after Thursday the 7th and following its fourth weekend in theaters, The Dark Knight would be at $446 million, good enough for third place on the all-time list.
And as you can see, while leaping out to a quick $300 million certainly helps The Dark Knight chase history, the next two weeks, in which it puts up $145 million, indicates just how hard catching Titanic will be. Can it make $150 million more after its first month in theaters? Theoretically, it can. Both Shrek 2 and Episode One are in that ballpark, but Pirates could only manage around another $80 million after its fourth weekend.
A more likely number is around $120 - $130 million, though The Dark Knight will definitely benefit from a favorable release schedule in late August and September. Traditionally, those six weeks or so are not the strongest, and it isn't uncommon to see a lot of bad movies during this time. Between Tropic Thunder and Star Wars: The Clone Wars on August 15th and Eagle-Eye on September 26th, there's very little lasting box office potential to be found. Curiously, the biggest obstacle for Batman will probably be The Clone Wars, which will attract a large percentage of the same audience and is also released by Warner Bros.
If The Dark Knight can make it to $600 million, it will need to have a pretty good fifth weekend, in the face of a lot of competition, to stay on track. Why? Well, we're looking at a $12 million weekend if it performs to the percentages, but between Tropic Thunder, Clone Wars, and Mirrors, plus carryover from Pineapple Express and The Mummy, $12 million doesn't seem very likely for a film that's already exhausted its first-time audience. In reality, it would need about $18 - $20 million to greatly help its cause, and then decline using the percentages in our formula. However, realistically, $10 million seems about right under those conditions. We'll tack on another $12 million during that week, so that our total goes up to $468 million in 31 days.
We brought this up in a message board on a related topic this weekend, but Titanic isn't the number one movie of all time because people raced out to see it; in fact, the opposite is true. We talked about how much The Dark Knight could make after its first month. Titanic is a rarity in the modern box office chase in that it made most of its money - $400 million - after the first month. You can't make that argument for The Dark Knight because it actually has competition around it. Titanic really didn't have any. Here's what I said about this singular quirk on the message board:
"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 (Titanic) 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."
Our calculations, which again, are educated speculation and don't even reflect my personal belief in what the film can do, would have The Dark Knight crossing $500 million, well into second place, by Labor Day. I'll spare you the boring math play-by-play we used to get there, but we're predicting that The Dark Knight will hit $550 million on Halloween weekend (and it should actually get an increase in theaters that weekend if Warner Bros. is smart), but look at the distance it takes to get there, nearly two full months to grab another $50 million. All we're doing is decreasing its weekly total by 40% from the previous week and going by the weekend percentages for Pirates, which because it faced a ton of competition when it debuted and because its second weekend is the closest to Dark Knight among any $400 million earner, makes it the most logical comparison.
Could it be higher than $550 million by Halloween? Sure. I'd say maybe $570, if every condition in the experiment plays out perfectly. I don't think it will be anywhere near that number, but I do feel $535 is a viable finish line. I can't really predict what kind of Labor Day spike it will receive, though I factored in a 23% jump that weekend. And two months is a long time; depending on the number of theaters Warner Bros. keeps the movie in, that number could go up. But I think $600 million by Halloween, if not out of the question, would take a heroic effort after Labor Day. Then, of course, after Halloween, there are tons of decisions: The studio will be pushing Harry Potter and its other holiday films, clearly the move at that point will be to focus on the DVD, and theater owners will have to decide if it's worth keeping a movie around that's brining in less than a million a week.
If The Dark Knight is on the high end of the Halloween number, say $570 million or so, there's a remote chance that $600 million could happen if Warner Bros. does a holiday season re-release in advance of the DVD. I don't see that happening, however, and more than likely the biggest movie of the decade will wind up between $25 and $40 million short of Titanic.
Once again, it's a ship that can't be sunk.
Reader Comments (32)
It's a good article, to be sure, but I think the one difference between this movie and "Pirates 2" that you neglected to mention is the actual quality of the films. Pirates 2 opened to middling reviews, and currently stands at a middling 54% on Rotten Tomatoes, as opposed to Dark Knights 94%. I know reviews don't guarantee a thing (just look at Hellboy 2), but when it surrounds a blockbuster of this magnitude, they do come into play. Word of mouth is positive for Dark Knight, in that friends and family are encouraging one another to see what all the hype is about. With Pirates, interest diminished quickly as late comers got word of its average quality. This movie has legs based not only on franchise, like Pirates, but on genuine talent, much like Titanic.
Not only that, but several news outlets have begun to speculate at realistic Oscar potential, not only for Ledger, but in the Picture, Director and Screenplay categories to boot, not to mention the sweep in technical awards. A late season awards push would be huge, and should it get any noms, a re-release would not be far fetched at all. Come January, where very little mainstream movie going is focused, and all of the sudden Dark Knight comes to seize the box office once again, even if it does only pull a few extra million.
I glad you brought this up because I've thought a lot about it. IMO, If WB is smart they will start up the viral marketing for this flick around the start of October, just in time for Halloween. Then re-release this flick as wide as possible and let viral marketing play into some sorts of Halloween Bashes for TDK. TDK fans everywhere will flock to since this thing one last time, and of course we know tons of people will dress up as characters or whatever. It will garner interest from mainstream fans as well because by this time it will have a shot to get closer to the $600 million mark.Also let's face it TDK is the perfect flick for Halloween, just like it is the perfect Summer movie. Batman has no limits.
Vincent -
It's a fair point, although the reason I picked Pirates was because its first two weeks mirror The Dark Knight more closely than any other film. Great word of mouth and near-universal good reviews didn't prevent The Dark Knight from slipping by over 50% from its first weekend, which is, as you can imagine, the second biggest weekend for most films.
I wouldn't hold my breath for The Dark Knight to take home too many Oscars; it almost certainly won't win Best Screenplay. We've got Australia, The Road, Benjamin Button, and some smaller flicks still to come, plus Wall-E. It's a crowded field. Best Director seems like a stretch, too, although I'd say Nolan could very well score a nomination; he's never been nominated before, and he's a great, young director. I wouldn't say it won't win Best Picture, but it has the best chance of being nominated in that category among the big three.
Ledger's a shoo-in, in my opinion. The tech awards, well, they're nice, and it will probably do well in several of them (let's remember, Quantum of Solace could push for editing and stunts, as well), but they don't spur on much box office performance.
And by the time the nominations are released, Warner Bros. could make immeasurably more money on video sales than they ever could mounting an expensive theatrical re-release for a movie people have already purchased on DVD. I'd also argue that there will be plenty of movies around in January, just not movies released in January. There are plenty of movies that appeal to the Batman crowd from November till the end of the year, with 007, Harry Potter, Transporter 3, The Day the Earth Stood Still, Twilight, and The Spirit all debuting within two months of each other. And because The Dark Knight has such massive widespread appeal, the number of movies that could eat away at its audience will naturally be larger.
I will concede that the numbers may be higher at the benchmarks than I've stated: Labor Day may be higher than $500 million, but it'd be a real stretch to say that the film would be within striking distance of Titanic by that point. Could it be higher than $550 million by Halloween? That's a real big if. We gave it a chance to make $570 million by then, but the real business for a movie is done in the first month, so you'd have to figure around another $200 million in the next two weeks for it to have a legitimate shot.
If you agree that a movie would make more money if it were the only option and less money if it's not, then clearly facing at least four $100 million flicks between July 18th and September 1st has to put a dent in The Dark Knight's run. Again, most of these movies will pull from The Dark Knight because its demographic slice of the pie is so wide.
And Allen, yes, I think Warner Bros. should go all-out around Halloween. The only reason they wouldn't is RocknRolla is due out on October 31st, and Joel Silver probably won't let WB undercut that movie after the dismal performance of Speed Racer earlier this summer. It will probably get a nice push.
hey i'd just be happy if it got in the top 3 in all-time B.O. records for the US, no matter how long or short it'd take to get there.
oh & an oscar for heath ledger.
Top three is almost definite at this point, and the Oscar seems very, very likely. Wouldn't you hate to be a fellow Best Supporting Actor nominee this year? Imagine if you won...
Hey, Colin, I get the feeling that box office number crunching is one of your hobbies, am I right? ;P
Anyways, Titanic is what it is. The Dark Knight's numbers are amazing, but Titanic had the repeat attendance of thousands of twelve year old girls and the dragging along of thousands of parents and grandparents. People who rarely see movies saw Titanic. To those losers...ahem...I mean people, ultimately The Dark Knight is Just Another Batman Movie.
Let us not also forget that though it was a mere 11 years ago, Titanic still existed in a world where an affordable, legal, high-quality personal copy of a theatrical release was not available 4 to 6 months after it's run.
Well, since Wanted was last week's most illegally downloaded movie, according to TorrentFreak, odds are there will be a few thousand downloads of The Dark Knight, too, which has got to hurt repeat geek business.
I have to second the first comment that the difference between this and Pirates is the quality of the film. But I'll also take it further and say that I believe it is similar to Titanic in the sense of repeat-business because I believe the millions of comic fan-boys are going to see this movie again and again and again. I am not one of them and I desperately wish to see it again. I think the current numbers represent mostly first time viewings with of course some multiple viewings. In the coming weeks those fans will give TDK that constant steam that Titanic had when it made $25 million a week for months.
On top of all that, go ahead and throw the mere speculation that the film will beat Titanic and see how many of those fans want to take the spot of the 12 year old girls and make their movie the greatest of all time.
IMO, the film will easily hit the 600 million for the reason I listed above and then sharply decline once the crown is earned.