Does The Dark Knight have a shot at overtaking Titanic as Hollywood's biggest moneymaker?

$600 Million. Has a nice ring to it, doesn't it? That's what Titanic made at the end of 1997 and the first half of 1998 in North American ticket sales. They didn't even make $602 Million, they made $600 Million even, like as if they waited for the 1 Millionth customer at the local grocery and closed the store after he made his purchase. Did the producers pull the movie from theatres after breaking this milestone? I wonder. Director James Cameron is a pretty nutty guy.
While we all know this is a lot of money, to give you an idea of how much it is for a movie, NO OTHER MOVIE HAS EVEN MADE $500 MILLION. The closest was the first Star Wars, which made a combined $461 Million between all its releases over the years. But Star Wars was made for kids and mostly boys. Girls saw it to see what all the fuss was about, adults saw it because they took their kids. Not like now, when many adults are still kids.

But Titanic had a huge potential audience. Women from 8 to 80 wanted to see this movie. Young women and especially teen girls wanted to see it many times. And boyfriends and husbands took their significant others to see what all the fuss was about and to see half a great disaster movie.

In the 10 years since, a challenger comes out of the gate it seems every year, to lay claim to Titanic's throne, only to come up short. The Spidermans and Shreks seem to give it a great ride, but are hurt by all the matinee and children tickets that are sold. When you are looking for the big prize you have to sell Twice as many $5 tickets as you do $10 tickets to come up even. But in this our most interesting hour is there a hero who can come to slay the mighty Titanic beast?

Perhaps, The Dark Knight? It's broken every record it's crossed so far. Biggest Opening Day Ever. Biggest Opening Weekend Ever. Fastest to $200 Million, fastest to $300 Million, now $314 M. It's AVERAGED $31.4 Million a DAY in 10 days. Step Brothers made $30 Million in its Opening Weekend and that's considered a hit.

I read a very interesting statistic. Women made up 49% of the audience for The Dark Knight, it's opening week. And on the same weekend Mamma Mia came out. That's an incredible number for a comic book movie. Comic book movies have very loyal customers, males 7 to 35. If you want women to go you have to have a great love story attached, but The Dark Knight doesn't. At least not with Bruce Wayne. But it does have two matinee idols in Christian Bale and the deceased Heath Ledger. I bet you even in creepy clown makeup, Ledger is pulling in these female fans.

I know Ledger's death has some ghoulish appeal to certain people, but it's his performance that should make you want to see him. Everyone is right. His Joker is the best madman since Hannibal Lector in Silence of the Lambs or at least the bad guy in No Country For Old Men.

But as for the money. Can it keep up this level of dominance? Other than WALL-E, it is the best reviewed movie of the year. It's getting Huge word of mouth. It's getting all sorts of Oscar attention, which is the most amazing thing of all considering it's the 6th Movie in a movie franchise that George Clooney left for dead back in 1997. It made $75 Million in its second weekend. What's coming out to beat those kinds of numbers? The Mummy?

I looked at the movies coming out the rest of the summer and The Dark Knight should end up in the Top 5 every week until the kids go back to school. $286 Million to Tie in 7 Weeks. $287 Million to win. Sure ticket prices are much more than they were in 1998 and thus it would lose on pure ticket sales, but Titanic isn't even close to being the winner on ticket sales.

That prize belongs to one other behemoth. Gone With the Wind.

The Freditor