‘Dark Knight’ won’t sink ‘Titanic’ record

As “The Dark Knight” kept breaking box office records, first for a Thursday midnight showing ($18 million), then for a Friday ($67 million), then for an opening weekend ($158 million), it became natural, particularly for its enthusiastic fan base, to assume it would keep going. Shouldn’t it become, like, the biggest box office hit ever?

So the specter of “Titanic” was raised even before John Horn’s article in last week’s Los Angeles Times: ‘The Dark Knight’ enters ‘Titanic’ territory.” But people who know box office know you don’t raise the “Titanic” lightly.

Why they call it ‘Titanic’
“Titanic” grossed more than $600 million in the U.S., tops on that list, while the No. 2 film, “Star Wars,” which benefited from multiple releases (1977, 1979, 1997), is stuck way back at $460 million, or only 76 percent of “Titanic's” take.

But that’s just the start of the story. Globally, “Titanic” brought in $1.8 billion. Only seven films are within half that number, and the closest, “Lord of the Rings: Return of the King,” is still way back at $1.1 billion, or only 60 percent of “Titanic's" final haul. Put it this way: You add the entire worldwide gross of “Transformers” (No. 29 all time) to “Return of the King” (No. 2) and you still wouldn’t be there. Fanboys are fanboys, but there are no repeat customers like teenage girls in love with Leonardo DiCaprio.

The news gets worse for “Dark Knight” fans hoping to obliterate box office records. Because, as titanic as “Titanic's” numbers are, once you adjust the domestic totals for inflation, “Titanic” isn’t even No. 1 anymore. It’s No. 6. “Gone with the Wind” is No. 1. Indeed, what’s startling when you look at the adjusted domestic numbers is how low films released in this decade rank. We appear to be in the age of the blockbuster, with franchise flicks such as “Spider-Man,” “Pirates” and “Shrek” making gobs of money each time out of the gate. But adjust the numbers for inflation and the highest-ranking film of the decade, “Shrek 2,” is No. 29.

How low is this? Every decade since sound was introduced is represented before the 2000s.

Top 30 domestic films Earnings adjusted for inflation and sorted by decade: Decade No. of films Top Film Ranking 1930s 2 "Gone With the Wind" First 1940s 1 "Fantasia" 20th 1950s 3 "The Ten Commandments" Fifth 1960s 7 "The Sound of Music" Third 1970s 6 "Star Wars" Second 1980s 5 "E.T." Fourth 1990s 5 "Titanic" Sixth 2000s 1 "Shrek 2" 29th

This isn’t exactly news. Inflation masks the fact that people just don’t go to the movies as often as they used to. Edward Jay Epstein, in his book “The Big Picture,” writes that “In contrast to the 4.7 billion movie tickets sold in America in 1947, there were only 1.57 billion tickets sold in 2003.” We have so many other forms of entertainment now, so many other ways to watch a movie.

The point of these box office charts — for us, more than the studios — is to find some measure of a film’s popularity, but, with the ways to watch a film is as varied as the films themselves (DVD rentals and sales, pay TV, free TV, streaming), it’s getting harder and harder to get the complete picture. Box office, to coin a phrase, is just the tip of the iceberg.

That said, just how far might “The Dark Knight” go up our three box office charts?

It has no chance on the inflation-adjusted domestic chart. “Gone With the Wind's” gross, adjusted to 2008 dollars, is $1.4 billion, and no film is ever going to touch that. But, as we shall see, “The Dark Knight” has a good shot at surpassing “Shrek 2's” inflation-adjusted total ($503 million in 2008 dollars) to become the most popular film of the decade.

As for worldwide grosses? The question isn’t whether “The Dark Knight” can best “Titanic's” $1.8 billion, but whether it can get halfway there. No superhero movie has ever done this. The highest worldwide gross for a superhero movie is “Spider-Man 3” at $890 million, and this still required $554 million from abroad. Batman movies have never done gangbusters in foreign countries (“Knight's” foreign gross is currently at $202 million), but it’s possible.

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