Nikki Finke goes on and on about The Dark Knight’s box office success:

So The Dark Knight posts still another best-ever. Media By Numbers is reporting that Warner Bros’ latest Batman installment crossing the $500 million domestic gross milestone today after only 45 days in release. It’s already the second-highest grossing pic of all time behind only the $600.8 million domestic haul of Titanic which took 91 days to pass $500M. The projected domestic cume for Dark Knight is $502,421,000 after this weekend. Interestingly, Wednesday, August 27th (its 41st day of release) was the first single day that the film earned below $1 million. In all, Dark Knight has set 14 major movie records since its release July 18th:

I won’t bore you with the actual records. Again, however, when you are talking about Inflated Hollywood Play Money™, box office records are everywhere.

When you talk about real money, and real box-office attendance figures, The Dark Knight’s achievments are less interesting. They run more like …

* The Dark Knight has now sold about as many tickets as Shrek 2!

* If it keeps going at this rate, why, it might be as popular as Thunderball!

* But probably not Grease!

Now, all that said, The Dark Knight does deserve credit for rolling up even those numbers at a time when movie attendance, as the last item noted, is declining. Part of its success has to do with Imax screenings, which have totaled $42M. (Take those away, and the film’s adjusted box office falls back to Independence Day territory.)

So Warner deserves credit for milking the film’s fanboy base with those large-format exhibitions and repeat viewings. It’s a marketing triumph, of which items like Finke’s play an important part.

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Previously in Hitsville:

Bogus box office and “The Dark Knight”
Box office records that aren’t
A record box office in 2007? Not so much
Crazy Nikki, PR person
The box office record that wasn’t, cont’d
A record summer that isn’t