Batman Still Kicking More Butt

After the past weekend in the US box office it looks more and more likely that The Dark Knight will be the fourth film ever to make it over the $1 billion gross worldwide box office takings mark.

As mentioned previously in another post I wanted to know if anyone was taking bets on whether or not this runaway hit would make it over the 9 zero line. Well, I think the odds are looking very good indeed.

The film was the third highest grossing at the US box office this past weekend taking in another $5.5 million with it still showing in theatres around the world but it needs to gross an extra $50-odd million to make it over the line. It's currently sitting in 6th position for all time box office gross but has dropped to 3rd place in IMDb's Top 250 Films Of All Time. I'll be keeping an eyeball firmly targeted in this direction.

Either way, congrats to Chris Nolan and Co. (see below) for making a shipload of money, now PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE do not make another Batman movie with an antagonist (that's a bad guy for those of you who failed grade 6 English) we've seen already. No more Pengiun, Joker, Riddler, Poison Ivy, Catwoman etc. please! But before you do that go and knee-cap Sam Raimi before he makes another bloody Spider-man movie, 2 and 3 were bad enough.

UPDATE: The deal is sealed, if it can't make the $50M it needs now it looks like Warner Bros. are angling to re-release the film in January to garner some Oscar attention. Read about it here on Movieweb.

Batman Still Kicking Butt

For its third week running The Dark Knight has come out on top in the US Box Office beating out the newly released The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor by a cool $1.4M USD to gross $43.8M. The new X-Files movie (The X-Files: I Want To Believe) comparatively bombed by making a measly $3.4M giving 20th Century Fox another financial failure in the wake of the terrible Meet Dave.

Anyone taking bets for TDK being the fourth film ever to reach the golden $1 billion USD mark worldwide? Currently Titanic is sitting pretty after grossing $1.84B USD worldwide back in 1997, Lord of the Rings: Return of the King is in second place with $1.13B USD and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest just scraped it in with $1.06B USD. Of course none of those figures have been adjusted for inflation... Google it if you really want to know.

Return Of The Big Movies

While the rest of the world sits back and watches the US of A enjoy their fireworks and whatnot over their big weekend we also get the benefits of the big movies that open at this time of the year.

It's been quiet of late in the world of cinema but taking a look at the recent US Box Office charts over at IMDb I'm glad to see we have a return to form. Up there we have Indy 4 kicking ass and fighting strong after weeks of being in the top 10 and about to reach the $750M USD global box office mark.

This week we saw Hancock open with a healthy $62M USD and little Wall-E was standing strong in second place with a running total of $127M. Pity we have to wait another month or two before we (officially) get to see Wall-E.

The other big names in this week's list are Kung Fu Panda and Hulk v2.0. I've seen the panda movie and enjoyed it but have yet to see the big green guy get angry again.