Tuesday
05Aug2008
'Dark Knight' Passes $400 Million, We Crunch More Numbers
Tuesday, August 5, 2008 at 12:08PM 
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.
Ok, you're right. You hit the nail right in the head when you mention admission numbers. I was working basically under the assumption that adjusted numbers would better reflect the number of people that would've seen the movie in theaters. But that may not be really a good standing point.
I was also trying to show that the impact of something like Dark Knight's ~500 mil today was nothing compared to Titanic's impact in 97, not to mention Gone With the Wind in the 30-40's. And that is what is really difficult for me to "prove". There's no numbers that can fairly reflect that.
Dark Knight has proven itself to be the biggest thing to hit the theaters in America for the last decade, at least. And that really amazes me.
PS: Reviewing my early comments I see that I may have sounded somewhat rude back then. I grant you it was not my intention at all. English is not my first language so those posts may have suffered from a poor choice of words. Sorry.
Yeah, I mean, Titanic is still so fresh, that James Cameron hasn't had time to direct another major motion picture!
Titanic was special...cap on it all you want. Dark Knight is special for other reasons, and I'm afraid that the mass appeal comes more from tabloid hype than anything.
Strange then that the tabloids may actually be able to keep pushing this film over the edge and past Titanic.
Why just today I was reading about Mary Kate Olsen's request for immunity in the Heath Ledger overdose case...
That right there has to account for another $100 million GDBO alone, doesn't it?
Either way, my heart will go on on on...
And Ledger gave one hell of a swan song performance.
Something people tend to miss when bringing up the fact that ticket prices have gone up so much is that ticket prices have outpaced peoples ability to pay those prices, thus making it harder (though obviously not impossible) to go to a movie like the Dark Knight repeatedly than it was for a movie like Titanic.
Think about it: average ticket prices have nearly doubled in the last ten years...but has the median household income doubled? Not in the Bush economy my friends.
So while it's true that Titanic will have sold far more tickets that TDK for all the reasons previously mentioned, the fact that the Dark Knight is drawing the kind of audience it is drawing is pretty astounding...more admissions or no.
[Titanic was also rated PG-13 though it featured an exposed nipple. Couldn't hurt, right? I miss you, Bill Clinton's America!]
And I miss you, Kate Winslet. What strikes me about all this is the crowds I saw for Titanic in January--long lines of pre-weeping girls, ready for their fix in the DiCaprio death cult. I wonder when studios will notice the business of a film like Cloverfield and drop a major effects blockbuster in deep winter? It doesn't seem to hurt anymore.
First of all, we got to see both of Kate Wislet's fabulous nipples in Titanic.
It is hard to fathom how much the market has changed. I remember as a kid when movies would stay in theaters forever and it's just hard to imagine how that ever happened. Just as it is hard to imagine how people ever got by in a world where you can't just "Google it" when you are stumped for information.
Two of my more vivid memories. I once went an entire school year (and I do mean a whole year) riding the bus past the single screen theater in my neighborhood that was playing Life of Brian. Every Friday we would play the wonder if it's a different movie this week game. I also remember seeing newspaper ads for Beverly Hills Cop proclaiming it's "50th Smash Week!"
Ah, good times.
There are other examples, but those are the ones I recall clearly.
Bubble Boy wrote:
"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)."
I was a big fan of that Batman when it came out, but I was also 11 years old. I watched it again recently after seeing the Dark Knight and it isn't anywhere near as good as I remembered it being. It's still a decent movie, but Batman Begins and The Dark Knight are a pretty big step up.
This movie will eventually beat Tim Burton's '89 Batman, even when adjusted for inflation!
The Dark Knight will beat the original Batman even when adjusted for inflation on tuesday. And simply put, inflation doesn't mean shit. All that means is ticket prices have gone up, and its harder to get people in the theaters. It's like, yeah, Gone with The Wind made like a gagillion dollars when adjusted for inflation, but the ticket prices back then were like 25 cents or whatever so of course a ton of people went multiple times. You know how many people would've seen Dark Knight like 5 times if a ticket only cost a quarter?
What I'm trying to say is you can say Dark Knight will never beat, um, Grease on the inflation chart (#25 with 544.6 million). But the fact is Grease never made 500 million dollars. It made 188 million when it was released. It didn't come out now and people didn't pay an average of 7 dollars a ticket so it didn't clear that inflated number. Plain and simple. Dark Knight did come out now with that average ticket price (in the middle of an economic slump, no less) and is gonna clear 500 million, now. And there's only two movies that can even come remotely close to that (Shrek 2 and Pirates 2) because they were released fairly recently. Even then, TDK blows those movies away.
So the concensus is that the only fair way to judge the box office numbers would be by ticket admissions. Did any of you happen to notice that BOM's chart for estimated ticket sales exactly reflects it's all-time box office chart adjusted for inflation?
'Gone With the Wind' is still number one with 202m ticket sales, 'Titanic' is still 6th with 128m, and 'The Dark Knight' is currently 49th with 62m.
This goes to show that the inflated box office is the best measure because it most accurately reflects theatre admissions.
And yes, I realize Titanic is still the champ, and will probably always be the champ. But of course, the competition argument does play a big factor in this. Cause TDK was released in the center of a very competitive summer season where it had to compete with a Will Smith blockbuster, a Pixar movie, the best opening weekend ever for a movie musical and like 28 other comic book movies. Then over the following weeks it had to contend with a Will Ferrell comedy, the (allegedly) anticipated sequel to The X-Files, the third chapter in the grotesquely annoying Mummy franchise and the newest film by the very popular Apatow camp. And its still got Tropic Thunder to deal with. What was Titanic's competition, I wonder?
Well, let's just start by stating the obvious. It was released in the dead of winter, which wasn't exactly a box office hot spot in those times, to say the least. It's direct competition was the Bond movie, which certainly did well, but this was counter-programming as I'm sure Titanic's crowd skewed female vs. Bond's heavily male contingent. Scream 2 proved to be a fairly strong holdover but after that there's no major competition to be found. As a matter of fact, no film in the top 20 was even close to grossing 100 million (only Scream 2 and Tomorrow Never Dies would clear that mark). Even more interesting is the fact that only 4 movies in the 13 or 14 weeks that Titanic was truly dominant cracked the 100 million mark (Scream 2 with 101, Tomorrow Never Dies with 125, Good Will Hunting with 138, and As Good As It Gets with 148). Compared to now, other than The Dark Knight I'd wager we'll see at least 8 films do that, not to mention the movies from the previous two months that will have grossed a considerable amount of cash during TDK's run. Mamma Mia has already done it. Journey To The Center Of The Earth is poised to do it. Step Brothers will almost certainly do it. Pineapple Express has a good chance, as does Tropic Thunder. The Mummy will do it. That Star Wars LEGO video game movie will probably do it. And in September I expect that animated movie Igor to do it. And Hancock, Wall-E, Hellboy 2 and Wanted (all major pictures) were all very fresh when TDK came out, and continue to do solid business. Those 4 movies have alone combined for about 638 million dollars in domestic box office already. Factor in The Mummy, Pineapple Express, Mamma Mia, Step Brothers, Journey To The Center of the Earth and The X-Files up to this point, and 10 movies released in the last 8 weeks have grossed over a billion dollars (1.032). These also aren't even the 10 highest grossing movies released in the last 8 weeks. I've left out Get Smart (127.4), Space Chimps (25.4) and of course, The Dark Knight (441.5).
What were the top ten highest grossing movies released within the same 8 week period in Titanic's history (not counting Titanic of course)? Well, at this point, they were Tomorrow Never Dies (103.4 in its 4th week), Scream 2 (90.7, 4th week), Flubber (85.6, 7th week), As Good As It Gets (54.1, 3rd week), Mouse Hunt (45.7, 4th week), Jackie Brown (33.3, 3rd week), Amistad (30.7, 5th week), For Richer or Poorer (26.6, 5th week), Home Alone 3 (26.2, 5th week) and An American Werewolf In Paris (23.3, 3rd week). That combined total is 519.6 million. Adjust that for inflation, and even then the combined total of the current 10 movies outgrosses these by about 400-450 million dollars. So I think its safe to say that TDK's competition is far more formidable than Titanic's was.
"This goes to show that the inflated box office is the best measure because it most accurately reflects theatre admissions."
...um, no. That would be true if tickets cost the exact same price for the entire history of cinema. They haven't up to this point, last I checked. And when Gone With The Wind came out, there was virtually NOTHING</B> to distract people from plopping their asses in the theater. No such thing as internet, video games, cell phones or satellite television. Hell, there weren't even albums yet! The first long player was "The Voice Of Frank Sinatra" released in 1945. Oh, and let's not forget that most theaters (if not all of them) only showed one movie at a time, so the competition wasn't exactly stiff. Quite a few of the major distractions people have nowadays weren't even prevalent when Titanic was first released.