Box Office - 'Dark Knight' Passes Half a Billion

The big story in a little weekend at the box office is once again The Dark Knight. In a mere 45 days, the film has made $502 million, according to new weekend estimates by Box Office Mojo, meaning it is only the second film in U.S. history to gross that much money. Titanic, of course, tops the list, nearly $100 million ahead of The Dark Knight. It seems that whenever we mention to astounding success of this film, the most common reaction we get is, "But if you adjust for inflation..." There are several reasons that's not a valid argument. Look at the competitive landscape now as opposed to ten years ago when Titanic was making headlines and compiling records. Actually, you can't look at the competitive landscape then: As we've pointed out before, in the six months following Titanic's release, only five movies made over $50 million, and not one of them made $100 million. Titanic made $600 million because there was nothing else anyone wanted to see. Now, contrast that with The Dark Knight. By the time mid-September gets here, it will have faced four $100 million movies in less than two months, plus there's the carryover from Hancock ($50 million since The Dark Knight was released) and Journey to the Center of the Earth ($60 million since July 18th). Suddenly, it becomes abundantly clear that the Batman movie is, in fact, doing something that's never been done before. Consider that it will make close $100 million more than any summer movie in the past 10 years, and you'll begin to see how unprecedented this all is. "But if you adjust for inflation..." The trend in home video is quite a bit different now than it was when Titanic was released. The Dark Knight won't be in theaters nearly as long (nine months for the boat movie), because of the opportunity to make an ungodly amount of money with DVD sales for the Christmas holiday. Once it's out on DVD, of course, the studios don't make money keeping movies in theaters with rental fees and all the rest. So six months is the absolute longest you'd see this movie in theaters. Rewind to 1982, and E.T. was in the top five at the box office for the better part of six months. Though it was released in June, it was actually the top movie in the country for two straight weekends in November and December. It managed to hang around the box office for over a year. Two summers. How? No competition in theaters and no home video. There was one way to see the film for most of America, because even HBO, Showtime and Cinemax didn't have the number of subscribers they do today. That's true of cable television all the way around, particularly the pay channels. A lot of Americans had four TV channels then. So: Fewer films in theaters, no "I'll catch it on DVD" reasoning, fewer entertainment venues. The marketplace was so radically different then, you can't compare the numbers for a big movie in 1982 and a big movie in 2008. Do you think E.T. would have the same luck now? If you adjust for inflation based on its numbers for 26 weeks (which is the absolute longest The Dark Knight could hope to hang around in theaters), its domestic gross is about $625 million. Still very impressive. But again, what else was out there? The Dark Knight has made 80% of that in seven weeks against much, much stronger opposition. If you prefer a head-to-head battle of current numbers, let's look at where E.T. was after seven weeks ($150 million) and what that would translate to today (roughly $440 million). The only legitimate gripe is the total number of theaters, but even then the 4,000-plus The Dark Knight was in for a month is more than counterbalanced by the fact that Titanic popped up in more theaters two months into its run (it went from 2,700 to 3,000, and then after another month, was in over 100 more houses). So while the market now dictates that a movie is done after three or four months, Titanic was getting a bigger push than new releases at the same time in its run. "But if you adjust for inflation..." Yeah, well, adjust this. Elsewhere at the Labor Day box office, Tropic Thunder pulled off the threepeat, handling the challenge of Vin Diesel's Babylon A.D., a movie that lost what little steam it had on Friday. The Dark Knight managed a third-place finish, followed by The House Bunny and Traitor. Although we don't have the four-day numbers yet, it looks as though Tropic Thunder might make about $14 million to lead the way, while The Dark Knight and The House Bunny will be in the $10 - $11 million range. Death Race is officially a bomb; the $45 million flick has only made $23 million in two weekends, and will be lucky to hit $40 million domestically at this point. Disaster Movie, the worst movie ever made, finished in seventh place at $6.1 million.

Comments

[Jeremy]

What do you think the chances are that they will re-release TDK sometime go get it over the $600M hump?

[Get The Big Picture]

Zero. I think it could make another $25 - $35 million over the next couple of months. I do think Warner Bros. would be wise to give it one last push at Halloween before the DVD release, and if they do and it does well then, it could hit $550 million or so. Like I said, once it's on DVD - where the studio could make some serious coin - it's pointless to leave it in theaters.

[Kellen]

I would just like to say I think it's unfair when analysts will use the whole inflation card. It's rididulous. They always try to force down my throat the fact that had this other movie been released today it would have done this or that. The point is it is much harder for a movie to be truly great at the box office these days. Think of how many forms of entertainment are out there right now. We've got television with 900 channels, satellite radio, Netflix, XBox, Play Station, Wii, I Pods and the advancement of today's internet which people can watch videos including bootlegged downloads of your favorite movies before they even hit the big screen. Wow, 10-20 years ago if this kind of entertainment was made available, maybe those movies wouldn't have made so mucg money.

I think most people will agree that Americans don't go to the movies as much as they used to. Years ago, it was part of a weekly routine. Everyone went to the movies, it was part of culture. Now all we ever hear is people complaining about $10 ticket prices and how all the new movies suck. Like I said before, inflation is a weak argument. The times have changed. And people need to understand.

[Jeff]

I'm glad Disaster Movie was unsuccessful. I wonder if bad spoofs have finally run their course.

[faulty-logic]

But if you adjust for inflation, does Star Wars not beat them all?? It has sold the most tickets right??
No disrespect for TDK here, I'm a bigger fan of it then the original Stars Wars. All disrespect towards Titanic. I just don't think it's worthy

[Michael]

If these numbers were based on tickets sold rather than dollars earned, then Star Wars my be higher than TDK (according to you anyway). However, the numbers are based on dollars earned. That's the bottom line. Sure, you can adjust for inflation, but then why not adjust for other factors? Inflation is in no way the only factor you could consider. It would be kind of silly if you start trying to adjust for every factor.

[gluvnast]

Even with Star Wars that debate is suspect in regards of inflated adjustment. For starters, that is a movie that has been rereleased several times throughout its 30 plus years. The last time being over a decade ago to add another 100 million uninflated. So you have conflicting inflated adjustments with the one that Box Office Mojo has being completely inaccurate, because it's based from the ticket prices of 1977 solely.

So if you basically based it off its original theatrical run, Star Wars made about 220 million in the box office, which for 1977 IS impressive, however everything else that was originally mentioned before about how vastly different the movie market should be noted. Back then, cable was virtually rare to non-existent in homes as well VHS. The only place to see it was are the theater, and that theatrical run last for almost a full YEAR.

And we shouldn't even go there with "Gone with the Wind" which trumps them all.

The Dark Knight should be held for what it has done within a such an extreme competitive market, and doing so in an unusual way considering that it was released on the latter end of the summer, without a holiday to jump it off from, with other competition that's either already there or coming up towards, and bootlegs are way more common now.

[RIPsquishy]

the whole inflation argument is completely ridiculous. obviously tickets were a buttload cheaper back in the day of gone with the wind, so duh it's gonna be counted as #1. those people need to take a chill-pill with inflation & celebrate with the rest of us peons.
& i'm still skeptical about the re-release of TDK at halloween...wouldn't that just not get much business? wouldn't everyone just go, "oh, i've already seen that 68 times, i'll just see it again when it's released"? idk, someone'd hafta explain that whole dish to me.