The Dark Knight | featured news

A masked gunman killed 12 people at a midnight showing of the new Batman movie in a suburb of Denver early on Friday, sparking pandemonium when he hurled a gas canister into the auditorium and opened fire on moviegoers.

“The Dark Knight Rises” may be on the horizon, but Disney/Marvel’s “The Avengers” can now look at “The Dark Knight” in the rear-view mirror. “The Avengers” grossed $20.3-million this weekend to lift its total domestic take to $552.7-million — rocketing it past Warner Bros./DC’s ”The Dark Knight” ($533.3-million) for third all-time in the record books. The Marvel-superheroes-assembled blockbuster is now the most successful superhero film ever.

Facebook is getting into the movie rental business through an experiment with Warner Bros., which will allow streaming of "The Dark Knight" for $3. Other titles will follow.

James Cameron's "Avatar" is on a course to sink "Titanic" at the box office. No. 1 for the sixth-straight weekend with $36 million, the 20th Century Fox sci-fi spectacle lifted its domestic total to $552.8 million, according to studio estimates Sunday. "Avatar" raised its worldwide total to $1.841 billion. That's $2 million shy of first place behind Cameron's last movie, the 1997 shipwreck epic "Titanic," at $1.843 billion.

Legion is, typically, a Sony Screen Gems piece that got dragged around for a bit... and the marketing dept. opened the thing to the mid-20s anyway... Oh... and that little Avatar thing. Another weekend record - for Weekend 6 - though it's about to start falling behind Titanic in this stat, probably next weekend. It's been running ahead of Dark Knight domestically for about a week as the fastest grosser ever, right now about $45 million ahead for 36 days.

Yes, it did speed past The Dark Knight's $533.3 million as the 2nd highest grossing film of all time at the domestic box office. And right now, based on my sources' numbers for Saturday and estimates for Sunday, Avatar's cume after this weekend is $552 million -- just shy of the No. 1 biggest grossing domestic film ever Titanic's $600.8M.

James Cameron's "Avatar" has shot past "Star Wars" to become the No. 3 movie on the all-time domestic box office charts. Next stop: "The Dark Knight."

After earning an impressive $16.4 million domestically on Monday, James Cameron's Avatar added another $16.1 million on Tuesday! That's the second-highest number for a non-opening film ever (behind The Dark Knight 's $20.9 million) and third-biggest Tuesday of all-time, trailing only The Dark Knight and Transformers , which opened on a Tuesday in 2007 and earned $27.9 million.

Summit Entertainment is now saying it debuted to $72.7 million from 4,024 North American theaters. This shatters both previous All-Time Friday and Single Day records of $67 million set by 2008's The Dark Knight.

This holiday season's biggest entertainment blockbuster likely will be a sequel to a popular franchise, with jarring depictions of war and an intricate story of good versus evil. It could easily rake in more than last year's record $155 million opening weekend for "The Dark Knight."...