'The Dark Knight' Takes Lead in Box Office
The Batman (Christian Bale) and the Joker (Heath Ledger)
The Dark Knight made $155.4 million dollars on it's first weekend, beating out Spiderman 3's $151.1 million dollars. Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., said that "[he] knew it was going to be big, but we never expected to dominate the marketplace." He estimates that it will reach the $200 million mark by the end of this week.
But due to higher admission prices in some places, Spiderman 3 might have sold more tickets than The Dark Knight.
2007's average price per ticket was $6.88, that means Spiderman 3 sold 21.96 million tickets. This years average is $7.08 and that would have meant that {i]The Dark Knight [/i] has sold about 21.94 million tickets.
There is also a possibility that the news about Heath Ledger playing the Joker and how he died in January of accidental drug over-dose may be another reason that this movie was such a big hit.
Adding $40 million to that, 20 countries opened The Dark Knigh on Wednesday.
The Dark Knight not only cost $185 million dollars to make, it also beat out Spiderman 3's debut on the iMAX screen with $6.2 million, Spiderman 3 was $4.7 million.
With this crowded summer and with so many summer movies coming out, no other summer movie kicks any other superhero movie out of cinema history.
