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Insert mouth, firmly place foot. This film’s business proved me wrong.

As most of the world knows by now, THE DARK KNIGHT is probably one of the greatest films ever made. I’m not even joking when I say that. It’s really that good. And it’s certainly the best comic-book film ever made.

Rumors are starting to fly about the next film (That the title will be GOTHAM CITY, which would be a terrible title… that would kind of be like calling a SPIDER-MAN film NEW YORK CITY… and the casting and the villains… guys and gals, it’s all BS right now), and there are some really cool (and some really dumb) fanboy-made posters for the upcoming film.

I never doubted that THE DARK KNIGHT would be great.

But what I did doubt was its box office.

Wow, was I ever wrong.

I knew it would open strong and have a good follow-up week or two because there just wasn’t much after that weekend. My reasoning behind this was that the film was going to be far too dark for return business. People would walk out feeling exhilarated yet depressed at such a dark film, and also with the tragic death of Heath Ledger haunting their minds. In the midst of such an unsettling and scary time in history, I didn’t think that this film was going to be the Summer extravaganza that others thought.

As of today, the most recent report puts THE DARK KNIGHT at approximately $489 million dollars in domestic gross after 6 weeks, and it’s at the #2 spot of the (pre-inflated dollars) Highest Domestic Grossing Film of All Time, which is still unfortunately about a little more than $100 million behind TITANIC. It’s made more money than STAR WARS, and that film’s dollar count included its various re-releases.

I guesstimated about a $310 million take.

This is one of the rare occasions that I’m so glad to be so wrong.