The Dark Knight has utterly smashed the record for reach­ing $200m the fastest, the pre­vi­ous record was eight days — by three films — Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Spider-Man 2 and Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith; all big name con­tenders. The Dark Knight has achieved this in five days, knock­ing a whole 3 days off the record. That’s phenomenal.

On Mon­day the movie took $24.5 mil­lion (a best ever non-holiday Mon­day) and Tues­day it added a fur­ther $20.87 mil­lion (sec­ond best ever to Trans­form­ers).

SSH has a nice sum­mary of The Dark Knight’s major accom­plish­ments so far:

Widest release (4,366 the­aters), biggest mid­night open­ing ($18.5M), biggest open­ing week­end ($158.4M), biggest July opener ($158.4M), biggest PG-13 rated open­ing ($158.4M), biggest sin­gle day ($67.2M), biggest open­ing day ($67.2M), biggest Fri­day ($67.2M), biggest Sun­day ($43.6M), biggest IMAX open­ing ($6.3M) and fastest to $200M in five days ($203.8M).

Source: Media by Num­bers, Thanks Keith

Here it comes, the one we have been wait­ing for — The Dark Knight has set the record for best ever sales on an open­ing week­end, reach­ing $155.34m — beat­ing Spider-man 3’s $151.1m.

We were hold­ing a straw poll on poten­tial week­end tak­ings, my Fri­day pre­dic­tion of $157m looks almost spot on , excellent!

“The Dark Knight” took in a record $155.34 mil­lion in its first week­end, said Dan Fell­man, head of dis­tri­b­u­tion for Warner Bros., which released the “Bat­man Begins” sequel.

That topped Hollywood’s pre­vi­ous best of $151.1 mil­lion, set by “Spider-Man 3″ in May 2007.

Source: AP, thanks Keith!

EDIT: Looks like the final fig­ures have been clar­i­fied — the WB had pre­vi­ously esti­mated $155.3m, it instead took in a record $158.4m, after tal­ly­ing Sunday’s fig­ures. It also set the record for an IMAX opener, earn­ing $6.2 mil­lion from 94 IMAX theaters.

We’d hoped this might hap­pen — after set­ting the mid­night sales record at $18.5m, it looked inevitable that The Dark Knight would go on to beat Spider-man 3’s record of $59.8m. Vari­ety tells us that early reports put The Dark Knight at between $60m and $63m from a record 4366 theaters.

We’re $60m up, just $90m to go to beat that week­end record set by Spidey. Still time to make your pre­dic­tions.

EDIT: Record con­firmed at $66.4m, smash­ing Spider-man’s $59m! Source: AP

After break­ing the record for open­ing in the most the­aters nation­wide (4,366 of them), Bat­man has now achieved the record for high­est gross­ing mid­night sales. Last night TDK took a whop­ping esti­mated $18.5 mil­lion — NOT includ­ing the 3am and 6am screen­ings! This breaks the pre­vi­ous record set by Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. To put this into some con­text, Bat­man Begins made $15m on its first day whilst the high­est sin­gle day open­ing belongs to Spider-man 3 at $59.8m.

You may want to take these fig­ures into account when pre­dict­ing The Dark Knight’s week­end gross.

Source: Vari­ety:

Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight” grossed the most ever for mid­night shows, rack­ing up an esti­mated $18.5 million.

The follow-up to 2005’s “Bat­man Begins” out­stripped the pre­vi­ous mid­night record set by Fox’s “Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith” which grossed $16.9 mil­lion from 3,663 venues. “Sith” went on to make $50 mil­lion in its first day, which was a Thurs­day. The high­est sin­gle day open­ing record is cur­rently held by Sony’s “Spider-man 3″ which made $59.8 million.

“Dark Knight” unspooled in a record num­ber of sites — 4,366 — out­strip­ping the wide bow of Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” which touted a the­ater count of 4,362.

Warner Bros. reported that the $18.5 mil­lion did not include 3:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M.

“Bat­man Begins” opened on June 15, 2005, a Wednes­day, earn­ing $15.1 mil­lion in its first day. Both “Bat­man Begins” and “The Dark Knight” are directed by Christo­pher Nolan.

As for the mid­night shows them­selves, they looked like a laugh — pic­tures by tech1987, Bren­dan Falkowskiand Clev­er­grrl

The Rejects Report over at Film School Rejects have put their money on a week­end gross of $136 mil­lion. This seems like a pretty good base­line to start out pre­dic­tions — the record, biggest ever open­ing week­end was set by Spider-man 3 at $156 mil­lion, sec­ond is Dead Man’s Chest at $135m fol­lowed by Shrek The Third on $121m (Source: Box Office Mojo).

The Dark Knight has already bro­ken one record, open­ing in the most theaters:

The film’s more than 4,366 domes­tic play­dates is a record, sur­pass­ing the 4,362 the­aters for May 2007’s bow of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” Dou­ble– and triple-screening at many venues means “Dark Knight” will play on 9,200 screens in the U.S. and Canada.

Its engage­ments include 94 Imax venues — Nolan shot long seg­ments using Imax-format cam­eras — and most of those giant-screen audi­to­ri­ums were sold out by mid­week. A Warn­ers exec esti­mated that Imax pre­sales totaled $3.5 mil­lion, with advance tick­et­ing for other venues adding con­sid­er­ably to that total.

— Hol­ly­wood Reporter

Rejects ques­tion why Mamma Mia was released the same week­end as TDK — I’d say to cap­ture all those girl­friends and moth­ers that do not fancy a gritty action flick yet are being dragged to the the­aters by their wide-eyed male coun­ter­parts look­ing to get their Joker fix. A quick dash, a fork split, you watch this and I’ll watch that sort of thing — shame they’ll be wait­ing a good 45 min­utes after their movie has fin­ished, with the Dark Knight clock­ing in at 152 mins.

I’m going to stick my neck out and go for an open­ing of $157m, because I am an opti­mist and Spider-man 3 deserves knock­ing off the top spot.

Place your bets now… (sorry, no prizes on this one, I haven’t got any free stuff to giveaway!)