Dark Knight Continues Its Reign

Tonight while I was walking in the neighborhood, I noticed the local movie theater advertising on the marquee, "Batman seats available." Ever since I saw The Dark Knight a couple of weeks back, I haven't been keeping tabs on how easy or difficult tickets have been to get. While I don't doubt that demand has dried up to some extent, apparently walk-up tickets are still enough of a hot commodity to deserve notice. And sure enough, a quick look over at Nikki Finke reveals that The Dark Knight remains the top film for the fourth weekend in a row. It's racking up amazing numbers--in only a bit more than three weeks, it's become the third-highest-grossing domestic film, barely slipping past Shrek 2, and now less than $20 million away from second-place Star Wars. There's still more than $150 million left to go to catch up with Titanic. Pineapple Express didn't do badly and even gave Dark Knight a run for its money, winning the day on Friday, but it couldn't do the job all the way to guarantee number one. This will probably be it for Dark Knight's run of number ones, though. Next week brings Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and that will be that.