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The Dark Knight Rises' box office surpasses The Dark Knight

Call it official: The Dark Knight Rises has now earned more money at theaters than its predecessor, The Dark Knight. This weekend TDKR netted enough to push its worldwide gross to $1.005 billion dollars, $3 million dollars over the 2008 gross of The Dark Knight's $1.003 billion.

Of course, ticket prices have gone up in the four years since the release of The Dark Knight, and more screens are playing the IMAX versions of The Dark Knight Rises, further raising ticket prices.

The Dark Knight Rises tops box office for third weekend in a row

The latest Bat-film beat the remake of Total Recall this weekend at theaters. For the third weekend in a row The Dark Knight Rises was the number one movie in theaters, taking in an estimated $36.4 million dollars. That brings the movie's total domestic gross up to $354.6 million dollars. With another $378 million bucks earned from international venues, TDKR has a worldwide gross of $733 million dollars.

Len Wiseman's remake of Total Recall fell into the number two slot with a so-so gross of $26 million dollars. The movie is estimated to have cost its makers $125 million dollars, so a showing in the black for the new Recall is unlikely to come just from its domestic ticket sales.

Dark Knight Rises composer Hans Zimmer writes song for victims of Aurora shooting

In the aftermath of the Aurora theater shooting, the filmmakers behind The Dark Knight Rises are coming together to help. Warner Bros. has donated money and deferred publizing the box office results of their Batman film out of respect to the shooting victims and their families. Batman star Christian Bale flew into Aurora on his own initiative to visit the recovering victims in hospital, and DC Comics has delayed the publication of their latest issue of Batman.

The Dark Knight Rises opens with $160 million

Warner Bros. has released the final tally for the opening weekend of The Dark Knight Rises and it has become the new number one movie at the box office. Including the early Thursday midnight screenings, The Dark Knight Rises took in $160,887,295, giving the film enough to be the third-highest opening weekend on record.

Compared to 2008's The Dark Knight, the third Christopher Nolan Bat-movie beat its predecessor by $2.2 million, The Dark Knight went on to gross $533.3 million dollars domestic, and while the final estimate for The Dark Knight Rises won't be known for a while, it's highly likely that the picture will cross $400 million dollars domestic in a couple of weeks.

How much will The Dark Knight Rises make at the box office?

Four years ago when The Dark Knight opened in theaters, it went on to enjoy a commanding three-day box office finale of $158.4 million dollars. Just this May, Marvel's The Avengers set a new record for the highest-grossing opening weekend ever, $207.4 million dollars.

Could lightning strike twice in the same year? Is it possible for The Dark Knight Rises to eclipse The Avengers and set a new opening weekend record?

Reviews from The Dark Knight Rises early buzz

Two weeks out from the gen pop release of The Dark Knight Rises and people have watched it.

Who are these folk? Select members of Hollywood, a smattering of film critics and members of the Hollywood foreign press. The first screening of The Dark Knight Rises for press took place two days ago on Friday. And if you read between the lines, the early articles and the tweets, the consensus from those that have seen the movie is that it's just as good, if not better than The Dark Knight.

The Dark Knight Rises run time revealed

When you go see The Dark Knight Rises, make sure that you hit the bathroom first. The run time for the highly anticipated Batman movie is finally known thanks to a published report filed by the British Board of Film Classification, and it's 164 minutes and 27 seconds.

In practical terms, that makes The Dark Knight Rises 2 hours and 44 minutes long. When it comes out it will be the longest Batman movie made to date, beating the run time of The Dark Knight by 12 more minutes.

A new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises

Well, this was unexpected. Nokia has debuted a new trailer for The Dark Knight Rises online and it's got a lot of new footage that I haven't seen before.

If you're already amped to see TDKR, and you don't want even a slight bit of your movie experience compromised by a spoiler or two, I might consider not watching the new trailer. If you do decide to watch it, check out my comments after the video.

What I like:

 -- Bane and his presense in this trailer.

Listen to all 15 tracks from The Dark Knight Rises

One of the factors that can make a good movie become great, and a great film become a classic, is the strength of its soundtrack. The 2009 release of The Dark Knight featured an unusual team-up between two A-list Hollywood composers, James Newton Howard and Hanz Zimmer. For The Dark Knight Rises, just Zimmer is returning to score the three-quel. And if you didn't want to wait until closer to the picture's July 20 release date before you could hear what the composer had made, here's your early opportunity to hear tracks from The Dark Knight Rises.

Christopher Nolan says no to fourth Batman movie

He may be the man who redeemed Batman to movie audiences but don't expect Christopher Nolan to make a fourth Bat-film. At least, that's what he is saying today.

The director of The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Knight and Batman Begins, Nolan was front and center at a Producers Guild conference held yesterday in L.A. Up onstage with his producer-wife Emma Thomas, Nolan fielded questions from the emcee and audience members, several of which were high profile studio executives. (Reportedly Jeff Robinov, Warner Bros.' president of producer, was also sitting in the audience.)

Six new character posters for The Dark Knight Rises

There is now two months left until The Dark Knight Rises ushers its way into movie theaters. With the home stretch for the movie's marketing rapidly approaching, Warner Bros. has released two sets of character posters for the film, one for North Americans and the other for those in the United Kingdom.

It's interesting to theorize why the marketing approaches for the domestic and UK audiences requires one Batman movie poster to be rain-swept and the other in snow falling. Was there demographic research done that said audiences in England would respond better to the next Dark Knight movie if it had snow in it? And why am I wondering so much about this thing?