Tuesday
Aug052008
Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 12:08PM 'Dark Knight' Passes $400 Million, We Crunch More Numbers
Slashfilm consulted
Media By Numbers for the latest
Dark Knight box office, and solely because
we've covered every theatrical heartbeat of that film, we wanted to pass along
that it has reportedly cleared $400 million, and has done so in nearly 30 days
faster than the previous record.
In 18 days, The Dark Knight has done what it took
Shrek 2 over 40 days to accomplish. The Media
By Numbers estimate also gives a presumed Monday total of $6.3 million or so,
good enough for a domestic gross of $400,031,000. Now, because it's an
unofficial estimate and that number is so close to not being $400
million, there's as good a chance that today's box office will actually be the
one that puts it over. Then again, that estimate might be a touch low, as well.
The point is: Less than three weeks versus six weeks and
a day for Shrek 2.
We raised some peoples' ire last week with our math
projecting where The Dark Knight would eventually end up. In case you
missed it, we used a fairly standard 40% drop for every week Monday-Thursday and
for the weekends we took the exact percentages from
Pirates 2. That movie, like Dark Knight,
zoomed out of the gates and set a opening weekend record, it opened in July, and
it had a lot of competition. So its weekly performance seemed to be the best
fit. And we took the numbers out 13 weeks, adding a little more pop on Labor Day
and Halloween (when I think Warner Bros. would be wise to briefly expand the run
of the film once again).
Even without the spikes on the holidays, using only the
40% drop per week and the Pirates box office numbers as our guides, we
arrived at about $545 million. I don't believe it will continue to perform at
this level for the next nine or ten weeks, though, so I personally don't even
believe my own experiment. However, up to a point - and we'll choose Labor Day
weekend as that point - the numbers should be fairly consistent with Pirates,
within probably $10 million or so of our original projections.
I wasn't trying to make a case for The Dark Knight
earning that much money. In fact, I was trying to prove that it wouldn't catch
Titanic. In the process, though, that's what
the numbers showed me. If the movie has real staying power, $525 million isn't
wholly unimaginable. Will it have staying power? Gee, I dunno, does $42 million
in three days after the movie had already made $350 million sound like staying
power to you?
What we should we expect in the short term is another
$20 - $23 million this week (the $6.3 million start on Monday won't hurt) and
maybe another $20 - $25 million this weekend. Taking the conservative end of
those estimates, The Dark Knight will be over $430 million by Monday
morning. If the numbers are on the high end, we're looking at nearly $440
million.
Star Wars holds down second place all-time at
the U.S. box office with $460 million, and that record is safe for another two
weekends. By August 18th, if everything goes the way it has so far, then we'll
have a new runner-up to Titanic, with around $465 - $470 million.
Just look at the box office champs that will be in
The Dark Knight's rearview mirror two weeks from now:
Spider-Man, Pirates 2, and
Phantom Menace will likely be surpassed in the
next week, and
E.T., Shrek 2, and Star Wars will
be shown the door by the 18th. If you're a naysayer to our math, then Star
Wars might have until the 21st of August to clear out its desk.
And even then it won't be the end of the road; the movie
should still be in the top five that weekend and the weekend after that. Unless
the numbers slip off dramatically on the weekend of August 22nd, there's very
little chance that The Dark Knight won't already be over $480 million by
the following Monday. As we said, expect a slight kiss on Labor Day - everything
does more business on three-day weekends - and you're closing in on $500
million.
Yikes.
Reader Comments (20)
All this math is so ridiculous. How come you don't take inflation into account? So what if it makes 500 mil ou even 600? If released today Titanic would've made 900 mil. I won't say anything about Star Wars or any of those Disney animations and other pictures from "pre-VHS, constant re-releasing" era, but even when compared to 80's & 90's flicks' performances Dark Night does not stand a chance. Just my two cents.
Just checked BOM. Dark Knight is now at the 63rd spot on all time domestic ajusted chart. Granting that it will surpass Shrek 2 (503 mil) but not Forrest Gump (556 mil at 22nd), it would still have another five or six movies from that were never re-released and had to grosse money from VHS - not considering Star Wars series either. Far far away from biggest thing to ever hit the cinemas.
I don't take inflation into account for the same reason you don't take increased competition, DVD sales, and online bootlegs into account, I guess. Titanic would've been out of theaters much earlier if there was the DVD market in 1998 that you see today: Turnarounds of three months, special editions at Christmas, etc.
I also disagree that Titanic would do more business if you released it today. Let's suppose it had come out on December 19, 2007, ten years later. It would've had I am Legend to contend with, The Bucket List did great business, and then there's the surge of Juno, all in its first couple of months. Titanic didn't have any competition in the winter of '97 - '98. There wasn't a $100 million movie around it for five months. And there's three in theaters against it ten years later.
It also may not have won the Oscar this past year, a fact that pushed the box office even higher for Titanic all those years ago. Then by April, having not enjoyed the run it did in 1998, the movie would be more or less out of theaters and headed towards a Mother's Day DVD release. No way it even mirrors $600 million in the marketplace today. There's a lot more competition every month, and studios make a killing on DVDs. Paramount would not be doing themselves any favors continuing to push Titanic with Iron Man and Indy Jones scheduled for May releases.
Did you ever stop to consider all of that?
BTW, as of now it hasn't even beaten the original (and far better, funnier at least) Tim Burton's 1989 Batman (445 mil, 47th).
Oh, sorry, I didn't see your response coming. But yes, I have actually considered those facts you mention. My point - wich I haddn't even got to say - is not that Dark Knight is a flop and that Titanic would've beaten it, or anyone else, for that matter. What I mean to expose is the false impression that those numbers make, when in a fair comparisson with old times it is just not that big deal. Sure Dark Knight is the hugest thing in 2008. Titanic wouldn't have "actually" made 900 mil if released last year. But those are just circumstancial aspects. Maybe I can't make myself clear as I'd like. I'm just viewing it with a different logic than yours. But that's alright, I guess.
OK, and ten years from now, The Dark Knight will look even stronger on an inflation chart. People said the same thing when Titanic loomed large against Gone With the Wind. The only true accounting is admissions, but good luck tracking all those numbers down.
The environment has changed so radically since The Exorcist first hit $100 million. After all, that movie still had lines around the block in Times Square four or five months after it was released. Star Wars had a similar impact. The exhibitors responded to the growing desire to see the new blockbusters by building more theaters with more screens. That, in turn, caused a shift in the overall economics of the industry. Everything became about opening weekend and getting on as many screens as you could. Now if your movie is even in theaters for five months, you've accomplished something.
E.T. was in theaters for over a year. In its 52nd week it was still in 600-plus theaters. You can't look at those numbers and compare them to anything in the past 15 years, if not longer. Unless The Dark Knight is still allowed to play in 600 theaters a year from now, that is.
Competition's the thing, in my mind. E.T., for example, was released in June and it never dropped out the top ten the rest of the year! It was number one in December. You're telling me that if that movie came out this June with Wall-E, Kung Fu Panda, and Harry Potter directly targeting its audience (and those are just off the top of my head; I'm sure there are plenty more), and with movies like The Dark Knight also lurking in theaters, E.T. would still be number one five months later? And it would be in theaters another seven months after that?
These numbers work both ways.
And keep in mind...you can use the inflation argument with a movie like Gone WIth the Wind...but Titanic...¿?¿?
C' mon!
Well, there's technically inflation since Spider-Man 3, something like 20 cents per ticket. So the actual price of the tickets is the only thing the inflation argument has going for it. I still say, release 'em today and tell me they'd do the exact same business. If you can't believe that, you can't believe the inflation argument.