Time Warner Inc’s Batman saga The Dark Knight was set on Saturday, a month after it was released, to surpass the original Star Wars as the second highest-grossing US domestic film of all time.
Star Wars earned US$461 million for News Corp’s 20th Century Fox studio in the domestic — US and Canadian — market after its May 1977 release, box-office tracker Media By Numbers LLC said in an e-mailed statement. As of yesterday, Dark Knight had US$459.6 million in receipts since its July 18 debut.
Those numbers have lifted Time Warner to first place in this year’s ticket sales among studios with US$1.31 billion, and may help the film industry break last year’s record of US$9.68 billion. Dark Knight has topped the box-office chart four times in as many weeks, making it the first movie since 2003’s The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to do so.
“For this movie to do what it did in 30 days is truly amazing,” Paul Dergarabedian, the president of Media By Numbers, said in an interview.
“This movie continues knocking down records left and right, and it’s unparalleled in movie history,” he said.
The movie surpassed US$400 million in ticket sales in 18 days on Aug. 5, cementing its place as Hollywood’s fastest moneymaker. The film broke the previous mark of 43 days set by Shrek 2 in 2004. The movie had previously bested the record for biggest opening day, US$67.2 million, and the largest opening weekend at US$158.4 million.
Viacom Inc’s Titanic is the No. 1 all-time domestic film, with sales of US$601 million.
In The Dark Knight, Christian Bale’s Batman ponders his future as a crimefighter as the Joker, played by the late Heath Ledger, terrorizes Gotham City.
The film is a sequel to the 2005 release Batman Begins.
The previous film, also starring Bale, had US$205.3 million in sales from theaters in the US and Canada.
Both films were directed and co-written by Christopher Nolan.
ENDEAVOR MANTA: The ship is programmed to automatically return to its designated home port and would self-destruct if seized by another party The Endeavor Manta, Taiwan’s first military-specification uncrewed surface vehicle (USV) tailor-made to operate in the Taiwan Strait in a bid to bolster the nation’s asymmetric combat capabilities made its first appearance at Kaohsiung’s Singda Harbor yesterday. Taking inspiration from Ukraine’s navy, which is using USVs to force Russia’s Black Sea fleet to take shelter within its own ports, CSBC Taiwan (台灣國際造船) established a research and development unit on USVs last year, CSBC chairman Huang Cheng-hung (黃正弘) said. With the exception of the satellite guidance system and the outboard motors — which were purchased from foreign companies that were not affiliated with Chinese-funded
PERMIT REVOKED: The influencer at a news conference said the National Immigration Agency was infringing on human rights and persecuting Chinese spouses Chinese influencer “Yaya in Taiwan” (亞亞在台灣) yesterday evening voluntarily left Taiwan, despite saying yesterday morning that she had “no intention” of leaving after her residence permit was revoked over her comments on Taiwan being “unified” with China by military force. The Ministry of the Interior yesterday had said that it could forcibly deport the influencer at midnight, but was considering taking a more flexible approach and beginning procedures this morning. The influencer, whose given name is Liu Zhenya (劉振亞), departed on a 8:45pm flight from Taipei International Airport (Songshan airport) to Fuzhou, China. Liu held a news conference at the airport at 7pm,
Taiwan was ranked the fourth-safest country in the world with a score of 82.9, trailing only Andorra, the United Arab Emirates and Qatar in Numbeo’s Safety Index by Country report. Taiwan’s score improved by 0.1 points compared with last year’s mid-year report, which had Taiwan fourth with a score of 82.8. However, both scores were lower than in last year’s first review, when Taiwan scored 83.3, and are a long way from when Taiwan was named the second-safest country in the world in 2021, scoring 84.8. Taiwan ranked higher than Singapore in ninth with a score of 77.4 and Japan in 10th with
GRIDLOCK: The National Fire Agency’s Special Search and Rescue team is on standby to travel to the countries to help out with the rescue effort A powerful earthquake rocked Myanmar and neighboring Thailand yesterday, killing at least three people in Bangkok and burying dozens when a high-rise building under construction collapsed. Footage shared on social media from Myanmar’s second-largest city showed widespread destruction, raising fears that many were trapped under the rubble or killed. The magnitude 7.7 earthquake, with an epicenter near Mandalay in Myanmar, struck at midday and was followed by a strong magnitude 6.4 aftershock. The extent of death, injury and destruction — especially in Myanmar, which is embroiled in a civil war and where information is tightly controlled at the best of times —
RSS