‘The Dark Knight’ Kills Weekend Box Office Record

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, which has been buried under a huge mound of other larger rocks, for the past week, you’ll know that the long-awaited sequel to Batman Begins, The Dark Knight, finally reached cinemas in the States on Friday morning.

We already knew that the film set a new opening day record on Friday, after it opened in cinemas around the US at midnight, and now the weekend box office results are in, and it’s more of the same. The new Batman film is estimated to have taken $155.3 million over its opening weekend, a result which beats the previous record holder, Spider-Man 3, which only managed an opening weekend of $151.1 million.

According to Dark Horizons, the film is also doing great business internationally, despite only opening in 20 countries so far, and not major markets such as the UK and Japan. Estimates are now suggesting the film will end its run as the biggest earner of the year, taking the title from close rivals Indiana Jones, and Iron Man.

The Dark Knight isn’t the only film available to watch over the weekend though, and Mamma Mia!, which managed to take $27.6 million, even though all the press attention was on Batman and his cronies. Space Chimps didn’t fare quite so well, taking just $7.3 million, which isn’t surprising seeing as it has garnered some terrible reviews.

Journey To The Center Of The Earth, and Hellboy II: The Golden Army both plummeted in their second week of release, while Meet Dave, Eddie Murphy’s latest attempt at finally killing his career off for good, also faltered badly.