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‘Dark Knight’ set to be No. 2 film

Time Warner Inc’s Batman saga The Dark Knight was set on Saturday, a month after it was released, to surpass the original Star Wars as the second highest-grossing US domestic film of all time.

Star Wars earned US$461 million for News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio in the domestic — US and Canadian — market after its May 1977 release, box-office tracker Media By Numbers LLC said in an e-mailed statement. As of yesterday, Dark Knight had US$459.6 million in receipts since its July 18 debut.

Those numbers have lifted Time Warner to first place in this year’s ticket sales among studios with US$1.31 billion, and may help the film industry break last year’s record of US$9.68 billion. Dark Knight has topped the box-office chart four times in as many weeks, making it the first movie since 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to do so.

“For this movie to do what it did in 30 days is truly amazing,” Paul Dergarabedian, the president of Media By Numbers, said in an interview.

“This movie continues knocking down records left and right, and it’s unparalleled in movie history,” he said.

The movie surpassed US$400 million in ticket sales in 18 days on Aug. 5, cementing its place as Hollywood’s fastest moneymaker. The film broke the previous mark of 43 days set by Shrek 2 in 2004. The movie had previously bested the record for biggest opening day, US$67.2 million, and the largest opening weekend at US$158.4 million.

Viacom Inc’s Titanic is the No. 1 all-time domestic film, with sales of US$601 million.

In The Dark Knight, Christian Bale’s Batman ponders his future as a crimefighter as the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger, terrorizes Gotham City.

The film is a sequel to the 2005 release Batman Begins.

The previous film, also starring Bale, had US$205.3 million in sales from theaters in the US and Canada.

Both films were directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan.
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