"Dark Knight" Breaks $1 Billion

"The Dark Knight" has become the fourth film to take in more than $1 billion in worldwide box office.

Warner Bros. made the announcement Friday afternoon, saying that the combined domestic and international gross had totaled $1,001,082,160 to date -- about $533 million domestically and $567 million overseas.

Comments

[Madmac]

If Hollywood releases more movies like TDK then we can get ourselves out of this economic mess that we're in

[AContrario]

$1,001,082,160 to date -- about $533 million domestically and $567 million OVERSEAS.

I wonder what people supporting the "buy american" think of these figures...

[Gasparilla]

Ledger was one of those talented people who I could see a movie just because he was in it. Johnny Depp the other, except for the last two Pirates.

[Ryno26]

So WHO got the lion's share?

[Longbaugh]

Great movie.

BTW, who still remembers all those who clamored for someone OTHER than Ledger for the Joker? I do. The whined and complained that Ledger was going to ruin the movie.

Then he gave one of the best performances we've ever seen. Shows who KNOWS... and who doesn't know. Doesn't it?

[plwood01]

It was a long shot, his swan song if you will because of his addiction to medications he would not have under ordinary circumstances have done such a remarkable job! Hopefully, he is now in peace and away from the darkness that had surrounded him with the making of the film. He was an amazing actor to have done "Broke Back Mountain." It is probably a good thing for his child that he will be remembered for Bat Man rather than one of the gay guys in the other movie though. It is just sad though to think that he did not get to see the fruits of his labor.

[Fixxin2]

plwood01 - It was Ledger's complete immersion into the role of The Joker that led to his use of prescription meds for severe insomnia. Taking those meds was NOT the reason he was so remarkable in the role. It's called talent.

And your comment about his daughter remembering him for Dark Knight instead of Brokeback was asinine and astoundingly homophobic.

[eXcommunicate]

Great movie. Great performances. Loved it.

[scorpioleidy]

Rented it today! My 16 yr. old is downstairs watching it now - he loves it!

[rbarthjr]

Only off by a hundred million: 533M + 567M = 1.1B.

[IconoclasticYouth]

That is over 1B... the title does say "Breaks" :-P

[jkminwa]

Check the math in the text.

"$1,001,082,160 to date -- about $533 million domestically and $567 million overseas"

rbarth is right. Now, please play nicely.

[realitycheck7]

d-u-m-b-a-ss

[naijaman]

Are you joking?

[realitycheck7]

I'm going to get into the movie business

[sepiasiren]

I am as a screenplay writer and that money is split amongst a gazillion people...d­istributor­s, investors, cast crew, etc., etc...

[Longbaugh]

Cast and crew mostly get a flat rate.

THAT money is going to the studio, the producers, and the Nolans (barring specific contracts, i.e. Tom Cruise routinely forgoes a salary for a percentage of the profit).

[realitycheck7]

I know how it works, I was joking

you see because 1 billion sounds like a large..... oh just forget it

[hypnotoad72]

$1 billion? Cool, they can pay their bit to the national debt.

Incidentally, is the movie actually good (it's 200th remake of "Batman" (a 1930s comic strip) for crying out loud...)) or is it because one of the actors died at just the right time?

Don't blame me for cynicism. I grew up watching mainstream television and back then, cynicism sells. 20 years later, gloom and doom sells.

[JLRoberson]

Yes. It's an allegory about moral choice pretending to be a Batman movie. Thing is, the film's really about Dent and the Joker--the Batman seems a little redundant in it, but because those two are so strong.

Ledger is brilliant and it really hurts he's gone. But Aaron Eckhart delivers a truly tragic performance nobody talks about.

[Charles Simmons]

while I would agree that Aaron eckerts performance was underrated ( I thought he was great as Two Face), I also thought that Christian Bale was equally good, at least at the end of the movie. He deserves some credit as well.

[plwood01]

I agree and to me the best Bat Man ever was Michael Keaton...compared to him, Bail is a lightweight and what was the purpose of his voice being modified? If people could not tell it was Wayne under that mask, the voice did not disarm anyone either.

[ynp7]

The movie is great. I'd have cut it a little shorter at the end, but otherwise it's fantastic. And it fixes almost everything that made the previous movie mediocre.

[Longbaugh]

"Incidentally, is the movie actually good?"

HAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

What?

[bootstrap bill]

It's a good movie, worth watching it you haven't yet. Christopher Nolan has done a great job reviving the Batman franchise. Batman Begins was an intimate character study of Bruce Wayne while Dark Knight was made as an epic crime saga. Nolan's movies are less "comic book/superhero" than character dramas. He focuses on the humanity, which is fitting since Bruce Wayne/Batman is probably the most psychologically complex character in comics.

[hilts]

Dark Knight earning $1 billion is the latest example of the dumbing down of America. This movie is a super sized, putrid, steaming pile of excrement. Movies that should have earned $1 billion include The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, Mean Streets, Goodfellas, Citizen Kane, Lawrence of Arabia, On the Waterfront, In the Heat of the Night, Chinatown, Nashville, A Man for All Seasons, Network, All the President's Men, One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, The Graduate, Raging Bull, The Great Escape, Easy Rider, The French Connection, A Woman Under the Influence, Sophie's Choice, All About Eve, The Manchurian Candidate, Midnight Cowboy, and MASH.

[firelord5000]

Really??? Most of the movies you mentioned made similar amount of money for THAT time. You really didn't bother thinking before posting by saying movies made in like 1941 should have earned $1 billion. When you account for inflation, money available to families, and % of people who watched tv/movies during those times, vast majority of the movies were similar to Dark Knight, which is a far better movie than majority of the crap that will be getting Oscars this year.

[calebd]

I can nominate twenty films of my own that I think deserve to be more well-known but that will change nothing. I love a lot of the movies you listed, especially Woman under the Influence. None of them have anything to do with the Dark Knight though. Also, the relationship you want to draw between quality and success is a false one. Dumbing down of America because a movie pulled in money? Seriously?

[sepiasiren]

thank you

[nsmavrik]

Here's how it should be stated. If these movies, that you SO much revere, are so good, why didn't they earn the inflation equivalent of 1 billion dollars? Maybe because they......­....weren'­t that good to begin with?

In the Heat sucked, Nashville sucked, A Woman Under the Influence sucked, Easy Rider sucked

Most of the other movies were in itself completely overrated. You only revere them because of being filled with the old actors that so many feel are the best.

Sophie's choice, Midnight Cowboy, The Graduate, Goodfellas. Very overrated.

You can say what you want about my comments but, if they themselves didn't make the bucks that Dark Knight did, then it is obvious that they weren't worth going out to see.

Just be happy that many of those films you stated won Oscars. OK. Fair trade.

[realitycheck7]

what you don't seem to understand is that most people on this earth are very stupid, and therefore don't understand quality when it comes to the arts because they are boorish philistines

I have my suspicion as to why you don't understand that

[alienufo]

what were the other 3? I'm thinking maybe one of the star wars movies, or LoTR.

[Takae]

From a random news report: "Titanic, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest are the only three films with worldwide grosses larger than The Dark Knight."

Titanic is still the highest-grossing movie of all time.

[C IH8U2]

And they told me I was crazy back when this movie came out, that it would make it here.
Who's laughing now?????
aaahahahahaha.

aawww come you can laugh with me "why so serious"??????

[DennyCrane]

For anyone wondering why this film wasn't nominated for Best Picture, it would be easy to say because it's a blockbuster or because it's based on a comic book. But there's one reason that rarely gets mentioned. Hollywood views the film as an endorsement of Bush-Cheney policies because of the things that Batman does in the film to capture The Joker. Personally, I think the film does a good job of showing how torture, kidnapping, and the violation of civil rights has a way of backfiring. But Hollywood probably wanted an uplifting film to win to give people hope in these troubling times, not a film that shows the bad guy winning in the end.

[deckard70]

Um... or maybe just because the Academy prefers ponderous, treacle-filled dramas? The Academy does not like to nominate films that are popular, or have comic book or science fiction origins -- they like to posture the Oscars as a celebration of "literary" films, and by that, they mean cliche-ridden tear jerkers, preferably about wars. They ignore films with imagination (though every once and awhile, one slips in).

[DennyCrane]

So Titanic and Lord of the Rings were just flukes? If so, I don't see why they could've let one more slip.

[Theodore Trout]

From Senator Patrick Leahy’s Wikipedia bio:
“A big fan of the Batman comics, Leahy lent his voice in an episode of Batman: The Animated Series as a Governor in a western tale involving Ra’s al Ghul and Jonah Hex called Showdown.
He also appeared as a cameo in Batman and Robin, and has another cameo in the 2008 film The Dark Knight.[12]
Leahy’s character, a guest at a fund raiser for Harvey Dent, is grabbed by The Joker, who tells Leahy’s character that he reminds him of his father.”

Sen. Leahy : We're not intimidated by thugs.

Joker: Y'know, you remind me of my father.
I HATED my father.

'The Dark Knight' is the finest film of its kind since 'the Great Dictator'.
'The Great Dictator' didn't win any Oscars either.
I think that if 'the Dark Knight' had contained a portrait of a heroic Batman who resembled G. W. Bush, rather than a demented Joker who resembled G.W. Bush, that it would have gotten twelve Oscar nominations, and would be assured of winning at least eight.

And Christian Bale could stomp baby ducks to death in the street without worrying about pictures of it showing up in the papers.

Best scene: imploding the hospital by remote control.

[Longbaugh]

This movie has nothing to do wiuth Bush.

You missed it by three years Denny. You would have loved spinning tales of George W. sub-plots in "Revenge of the Sith".

The reason it didn't get the nod was because, as good as it was, it wasn't better than Benjamin Button, Milk, the Reader, Slumdog Millionaire, Frost/Nixon, the Wrestler, Che, Doubt, and a few others.

Let me repeat: Batman's inner quarrels over revenge and "to kill or not to kill" are older than the last eight years.

[HotheadPaisen]

Hey- are you the DennyCrane who posts in Tampabay papers? Luv ya man!!

[Bariis]

I'd see it again in a heartbeat!