Box Office: Holy $300 Million, Batman!!!
Posted by John Cairns (jcairns@filmschoolrejects.com) on July 29, 2008
The superlatives keep on being used in connection to The Dark Knight, which continues to set one record after another at the box office. I had promised myself not to use the word “holy” ever again in any descriptions about The Dark Knight’s performance, but what else is there to say — other than “holy crap”, “holy moley”, “holy cow”, “holy this” or “holy that?”
This weekend The Dark Knight finished in first place for the second straight time with a haul of $75.6 million, putting it over $300 million in domestic gross after only ten days of release. It is the fastest that any movie has made it to $300 million. Like I say: holy freaking crap!!!
Actually, it’s made it all the way to $314 million, based on the weekend’s performance. It dropped off from last week’s box-office by 52 percent, which is not bad considering how much this movie broke the bank during its opening weekend out. The Dark Knight is due to pass both Iron Man and Indiana Jones 4 sometime Monday to become the top grossing box office hit of the entire year of 2008. That didn’t take long: only 11 days for that to happen.
This really is absolutely amazing, the performance of this movie. Many people are still thinking this movie could threaten the $600 million Titanic record, but let’s wait and see what happens in the next while and see whether this momentum continues. As it stands The Dark Knight took a hefty drop from last week’s numbers and while there are lots of people claiming this movie will do good repeat business the jury really is still out on that. August is kind of a down month for releases generally, and September is usually even worse. We will need to see some hard evidence of continued momentum before we pronounce one way or another how this movie will do in the long run against Titanic. But as I have said before, the very fact that people are even bringing up the subject of Titanic’s record says a lot in itself about The Dark Knight and how it has done.
In other box office news the Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers did good business, finishing second at $30 Million. No records, not even a first place finish, but not too shabby all things considered. The big story was how poorly The X-Files: I Want to Believe did. Nobody expected a blockbuster here, but $10.2 million?? That’s dismal, to say the least. This has turned out to be a summer of extremes at the box office — extreme hits like The Dark Knight and Iron Man, and extreme flops like Speed Racer, The Love Guru and now this X-Files flick.
This movie even finished behind Mamma Mia!! The truth is out there for the X-Files – and the truth hurts.
Here are the damages:
| 1. The Dark Knight | $75.6 million |
| 2. Step Brothers | $30.0 million |
| 3. Mamma Mia! | $17.8 million |
| 4. The X-Files: I Want to Believe | $10.2 million |
| 5. Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D | $9.4 million |
| 6. Hancock | $8.2 million |
| 7. WALL-E | $6.3 million |
| 8. Hellboy II: The Golden Army | $4.9 million |
| 9. Space Chimps | $4.4 million |
| 10. Wanted | $2.7 million |
What else is there to say about The Dark Knight that hasn’t already been said? The next record to go down will likely be the “fastest movie to $400 million” record, which is currently held by Titanic and Spider-Man. These two made it to $400 million after 66 days. Fat chance that record is going to hold up much longer if The Dark Knight keeps on doing $15 to $20 million in business per day.
Next weekend The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor rolls out to challenge the Batman for some business. That’s all for this box office edition of the Reject Report. Stay tuned for more this week, as we continue to track The Dark Knight’s progress.
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