After weeks of beating almost every record in its path, The Dark Knight is now the #2 highest grossing film of all time.

With an estimated total haul of around $470 million after this weekend, Knight has banked enough to top 1977's Star Wars which previously held the #2 spot with $461 million.

Knight's next milestone is $500 million, which is obtainable within the next two weeks or so. The end of August is never the most successful time of the year, and the Caped Crusader will face less-than-imposing opposition when the likes of The House Bunny, College and Babylon A.D. open in the weeks to come.

As for topping Titanic, which currently holds the #1 spot with $600.8 million, that's probably still a stretch unless Warner Bros. re-releases the film in theatres later this fall before it hits DVD. Another option would be to re-release it theatrically after the Oscar nominations are announced. At this point, Heath Ledger is all but a lock for a nomination in the Best Supporting Actor category and said nomination could provide a surge of interest in the film.

Even if Knight eventually falls shy of the #1 spot, it has already had a very successful run. The film has amassed such impressive records as the highest opening weekend gross and the fastest movie to hit the $400 million mark. Knight has also been a huge success for the IMAX format and it's causing more filmmakers to embrace the format.

Dane Cook is a fan of his latest film, My Best Friend's Girl, and he considers it to be the "best/funniest film" he has made.

Unfortunately, he doesn't share the same love for the film's poster.

In a MySpace entry Cook posted this past Wednesday, the actor/comedian spent a paragraph praising Girl before jumping into a point-by-point analysis of why he doesn't like the poster.

Among Cook's complaints are, "The left side of my face seems to be melting off of my skull. I guess I am looking directly into the Ark of the Covenant?" and "My character apparently has fallen in love with a strand of Kate Hudsons hair. Kate's mannequin is desperately in love with the inside of my right ear while Jason is half stunned, half corsage."

Girl hits theatres September 19th, when it will go up against Neil LaBute's Lakeview Terrace which stars Samuel L. Jackson and Patrick Wilson as well as Ghost Town with Ricky Gervais, Greg Kinnear and Tea Leoni. Since none of those films have blockbuster written all over them, it's safe to say that it will be a competitive weekend and Cook's comments probably won't help Girl's case.

George Lopez recently walked the same road as Cook when he took a dig at the trailer for Beverly Hills Chihuahua.

“If you’ve seen the trailer, it’s either the greatest trailer you’ve ever seen if you’re 10, or the most annoying trailer you’ve ever witnessed in your life if you’re an adult,” Lopez told MTV.

Unlike Girl, Chihuahua should face little opposition from the other films that open with it on October 3rd. Nick and Norah's Playlist, How to Lose Friends and Alienate People and What Just Happened? all skew toward adult audiences.

It's only competition may be reluctant parents.

You don't need to be an industry insider to figure out that Tom Cruise is not the superstar he once was.

After committing a series of public relations disasters, Cruise has not been nearly as bankable at the box office as he once was. That fact was powerfully confirmed when Lions for Lambs, in which Cruise starred opposite Meryl Streep and Robert Redford, landed with a massive thud last November and grossed only $15 million domestically.

All hope is not lost though, because Cruise's scene-stealing role in Tropic Thunder may be going a long way toward redeeming the actor in the public eye.

Normally, yesterday's news that Paula Wagner, Cruise's longtime business partner, will be leaving United Artists and more or less ending what has been a very profitable relationship would have seemed like another nail in the actor's coffin.

Then came some good news for once.

Valkyrie, Cruise's much-delayed World War II drama about an attempt to assassinate Adolph Hitler, was moved from a February 13th, 2009 release date to December 26th, 2008. While many saw the decision to push Valkyrie into 2009 as a sign of weakness, this latest decision has to be viewed as a sign of renewed confidence considering that it places the film right into the heat of Oscar season.

Is it because audiences are now laughing with Cruise instead of at him?

"The thing is that he's always had a really good sense of humor about himself," said Jenelle Riley, National Film & Television Editor for Back Stage magazine. "When you look back to the MTV Movie Awards bits that he would do with Ben Stiller, I think that's what we've been missing more with the public perception of him. He just suddenly got very serious about himself over the last couple of years."

Currently, Cruise is seriously circling two projects and at this point there is a lot riding on his every move.

First, there's Food Fight which would keep Cruise in a comedic vein by casting him as a snooty New York chef who is forced to cook in a school cafeteria. Then, there is The Tourist, which deals with the world of spies and would be a much more serious project as a result.

Weighing both options, Riley thinks it's smarter for Cruise to cast himself in a comedic light the next time around.

"Food Fight has a lot of potential. ... It sounds a little like it could go in that Jerry Maguire vein, where the arrogant guy has to be redeemed and people love seeing [Cruise] like that."

With a population of 2,567, the Village of Wales, Wis., doesn’t qualify as a ghost town. But it was there, at Kettle Moraine High School, that the writing partnership that eventually produced the script for Ghost Town began with the meeting of David Koepp (Class of 1981) and John Kamps (Class of 1983).

“It’s true,” confirms Koepp, who—like Kamps—has since been inducted into the KMHS Hall of Fame. “I grew up in a small town in Wisconsin named Pewaukee. And, actually, John is from Genesee Depot. But we went to the same high school—Kettle Moraine. You want a spelling on that, or are you up on your glacial terms?”

(Let the record show that the interviewer, who learned all about the role of glaciers in shaping Wisconsin’s geography while attending grade school in his own small town in the Badger State, does indeed remember how to spell “Kettle Moraine.”)

“And then we also went to the University of Wisconsin together for a year, and that’s probably where we became better friends,” adds Kamps. “But then [Koepp] transferred to UCLA for film school. But we kept in touch—you know, showed different pieces of work to each other. And after I graduated college, he said, ‘Why don’t you come out to L.A. and try screenwriting?’ And that sounded a little more fun than law school, so I came out—and never left.”

Out in Hollywood, Koepp and Kamps’ first professional screenwriting collaborations came on a couple of rewrites credited to a single pseudonym. “But after we did those initial jobs, we didn’t write together for a long time,” Kamps says.

In fact, it wasn’t until 15 years later that another script the two wrote together was produced—an adaptation of Chris Van Allsburg’s Zathura. In-between, each had added considerable credits to his name: Kamps’ included family-friendly fare such as The Borrowers and Mighty Morphin Power Rangers: The Movie; Koepp’s included popcorn pictures such as Jurassic Park, Mission: Impossible and Spider-Man. Throughout it all, though, Koepp and Kamps continued to read—and offer notes on—each other’s scripts.

“It’s a friendship first and a writing relationship second,” Koepp says. “But I just really like [Kamps’] writing. He’s got a gift for character, and anytime I feel like a script calls for funny—you know how people say that funny is really hard? Funny is actually easy—all you have to do is call Kamps.

“He’s just one of the funniest people I know, and he manages to have humor that grows out of character, which is really, really, the whole ball game. They’re not just jokes, they’re jokes because of who the people are,” Koepp says. “And I think that’s what makes him so good.”

And that character-driven approach to comedy was what ultimately attracted Ricky Gervais to Ghost Town. But it was Koepp, not Kamps, who came up with the concept for the rom-com about a dentist who suddenly starts seeing more ghosts than patients.

“I was finishing directing Secret Window,” says Koepp, referring to the 2004 horror/thriller starring Johnny Depp. “Usually, I write. And I enjoy the writer’s lifestyle; I like the isolation of writing. So when I direct, it’s kind of shocking because there are so many people to deal with. And writers are writers because we kind of like the quiet.

“And so I was at the very end of this long shoot, and everybody was driving me crazy, so I went for a walk—over lunch on a shooting day—and I was walking around in the Village, and I saw a big tooth-shaped sign hanging outside somebody’s dental office, and I thought, ‘What a great profession that must be, because the people you work with have cotton shoved in their mouth, and they can’t talk to you.’ It was a bad day,” Koepp recalls with a laugh. “So that character just sort of leapt to mind, and I thought, ‘What would be the worst thing that could happen to that guy? If everyone had unfettered access to him.’ And so the ghost premise came in.”

Koepp ran the idea past Kamps, who thought it was terrific. “And we sat down, roughed out an outline and sold it as a treatment to DreamWorks,” Kamps says. “And, many drafts later, Ghost Town was born.”

He found another idea—that of having his trusted writing partner Koepp direct their script—terrific, as well.

“It was just a dream experience for me because Dave kept me involved every step of the way,” Kamps says. “I live in California, and Dave lives in New York, and I have two small children so I couldn’t be on the set the whole time, but I came out for the read-through at the beginning of shooting. We did a small rewrite at the beginning, but when it went into production there weren’t a lot radical changes. They would call occasionally for a line or because something had changed because the location didn’t suit the scene, but really the script we finished right before they started shooting is what appeared on screen—except for editing, of course.”

And neither Kamps nor Koepp had any reservations about putting their material into the hands of Gervais, an actor who’s also highly regarded as a writer.

“You’re crazy if you don’t take good suggestions,” Koepp says. “And a guy like Ricky not only knows how to write well for others—and he’s won lots of awards for it and done brilliant work—but he also knows how to write well for himself. And particularly with a comedian, they know what’s going to work for them. So after he said he would do it, we went over to London and read through the script a few times with him and did some rewriting, and of course on the set, he’s also a very gifted improvisational comedian, so some stuff came up in that setting. When it’s all said and done, though, I’d say about 90 percent of what he says in this movie was scripted. Because you try lots of other stuff, but it usually comes back to what was already written.

“The character [of Bertram Pincus] was very specific on the page—he was one of the stronger characters I think John and I have ever written, and certainly compared to the ones I’ve written on my own,” Koepp says. “But then what’s funny is once Ricky was cast, it was impossible to imagine anyone else playing him. I really think it is a uniquely good meeting of performer and material.”

And if Ghost Town scares up big business at the box office, Koepp and Kamps may one day remember that meeting as one of the most important in the course of their collaboration since the first one back at Kettle Moraine High School.

This article appears in the September 2008 issue of BOXOFFICE.

While it should still be a successful film, Tropic Thunder may not open quite as big as many in the industry predicted it would.

The film grossed $6.5 million on its first day of release and that total falls well beneath the $12.08 million that Pineapple Express was able to bring in last Wednesday. Express went on to gross a slightly underwhelming $23.2 million last weekend, which wasn't good enough to topple The Dark Knight.

While Thunder could certainly pick up today and gain even more momentum heading into the weekend, expectations are being downgraded for the time being.

Moviegoers are now experiencing an onslaught of R-rated comedies since Step Brothers opened with a solid $31 million during the July 25th weekend. In the weeks to come, two more R-rated laughers, Hamlet 2 and College, will try to tap into audiences who prefer their humor to be a little more dirty.

When speaking with Jim Kopp, Owner of the Raleigh Road Outdoor Theatre in North Carolina, about Star Wars: The Clone Wars, the issue of the film being animated hardly comes up.

What seems to be most important to Kopp, as well as many other fans across the country, is that no matter how the content is presented, this is still Star Wars.

Located in Henderson, North Carolina, Kopp's theatre is one of only seven operating drive-in theatres in the state and there are only 398 still functioning throughout the country. Over the last decade or two, the drive-in theatre in general has come to represent a bridge to the past that people still respond to.

After all, it was at drive-in theatres that many people originally experienced the cultural phenomenon that was the first Star Wars back in 1977.

As a theatre owner, Kopp is doing his best to make experiencing this latest film as nostalgic and entertaining as he can for his audience. With support from Warner Bros. and Lucasfilm, audience members who attend the 7 p.m. showing this Saturday will be joined by authentic Star Wars characters such as Darth Vader, C3P0, R2D2 and Darth Maul. Kopp is even anticipating a bigger audience turnout than the one that welcomed Bill Clinton when he passed through town in support of his wife's presidential campaign this past spring.

Of course, not everyone is excited about this latest installment in the Star Wars saga. In his negative review of the film, Variety's Todd McCarthy wrote that, "This isn't the Star Wars we've always known and at least sometimes loved." Many other critics are also singing the same tune as McCarthy.

Yet if there was ever a franchise that was absolutely critic proof it would be this one. According to Joel Cohen, Executive Vice President & General Manager for Movietickets.com, Clone Wars is outselling the comedic juggernaut Tropic Thunder by about 2 to 1 at the same point in the selling cycle. The two radically different films will be competing against each other this weekend in an attempt to dethrone The Dark Knight.

Tropic Thunder will hit theatres nationwide tomorrow and it's easily one of the most anticipated comedies of the summer.

Unfortunately, not everybody is laughing.

Thunder has drawn its share of controversy from disability groups who are objecting to what they view as the exploitation of people with disabilities to gain laughter.

Members of the Special Olympics, as well as supporters of the organization, staged a protest during the Thunder premiere and are now calling for a boycott.

In a media alert release by the group, the reason given for protesting the premiere was "to demonstrate against the film's use of the inflammatory word 'retard' and the demeaning portrayal of people with intellectual disabilities throughout the movie."

The negative reactions put theatre owners in a situation where protests could be occurring outside and offended patrons may be asking for their money back. Facing this kind of hostility is certainly nothing new to the world of exhibition and it doesn't change the fact that Thunder is most likely going to rank as another box office success in an already very prosperous summer.

Mike Hurley, the owner of two independent theatres in Maine as well as the creator of bigscreenbiz.com, which serves as an online community for exhibitors, respects the complaints being made but doesn't necessarily think that Thunder represents a bigger problem in our society.

"There's obviously nothing funny about making fun of people who are handicapped, whether its physically or mentally. But you know something, the reality is that when I was kid that was normal and I don't think it's normal anymore to do that," said Hurley, "The entire country has come a long way on how we view handicapped people and how they are integrated into the community and how they are treated with respect. Comedy is not always respectful."

Four weeks into its theatrical release, The Dark Knight is still breaking records.

This weekend it was able to edge past Shrek 2 as the third highest grossing film of all time. In addition, it should also easily top the second highest grosser, the original Star Wars with $460.9 million, by this coming weekend.

Whether or not Knight will be able to top Titanic's all-time leading haul of $600.7 remains to be the seen, and it will face strong competition this coming week from Tropic Thunder and Star Wars: The Clone Wars and that will almost certainly lead to the end of its run at #1.

In addition to topping Shrek 2 this weekend, Knight also became the first film since 2003's The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King to stay #1 for four straight weekends.

While Woody Allen has worked very consistently over the last couple of decades, he no longer has the same level of mainstream popularity he enjoyed during his late-70's heyday which produced classics such as Annie Hall and Manhattan.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona could change that.

Barcelona, which stars Javier Bardem, Penélope Cruz, Scarlett Johansson and Rebecca Hall, hits theatres on August 15th and it brings with it a lot of buzz. Since debuting at Cannes, the film has been receiving its share of critical praise and its cast is white hot. Bardem is fresh off an Oscar win for his chilling supporting turn in No Country for Old Men and both Cruz and Johansson are talented actresses who garner quite a bit of attention from the flashing bulbs of the paparazzi.

Of course, the film also boasts a kiss between Johansson and Cruz which could do a fare share of buzz building on its own.

Dale Hurst, the Director of Marketing for Carmike Cinemas is confident that Barcelona will be a success for Allen.

"Being in the business as long as I have, since 1971 and even earlier, Woody Allen has always been entertaining to me ... So I don't see why this movie should be any different. I'm looking forward to seeing [Barcelona]. This is a perfect time to introduce [Allen's] talents to a much younger audience," said Hurst.

Barcelona, which is set against the beautiful locales of Spain, also represents another change of scenery for Allen. The auteur has not filmed a movie set in his native New York since 2004's Melinda and Melinda, which failed to grab a larger audience for the 72-year-old writer/director despite starring Will Ferrell.

In 2005, Allen relocated to London for Match Point which critics and audiences alike hailed as a return to form after a string of disappointments. Point is also Allen's most financially successful film over the last several years. It brought in $23.1 million domestically, which is strong for Allen considering that he always receives a better reception overseas.

Point marked the beginning of Allen's unofficial "London Trilogy," as the director elected to film his next two projects there. However, 2006's Scoop and 2007's Cassandra's Dream proved to be considerably less successful than Point. Dream failed to even cross the $1 million mark domestically.

Barcelona will land in theatres two days after Tropic Thunder makes its appearance, which will be a big obstacle. Yet it will face little direct opposition from two animated flicks, Star Wars: The Clone Wars and the 3D Fly Me to the Moon that open the same day.

Barcelona could even be a welcome breath of fresh air for audiences after a summer of special effects extravaganzas. Either way, Allen will keep on working, whether American audiences are with him or not.

It looks as though the marijuana-fueled antics of Seth Rogen and James Franco in Pineapple Express are going to lead to a strong box office debut.

According to studio estimates, Express brought in $12.15 million yesterday, which set a new record for the highest Wednesday opening in the month of August. 2004's The Princess Diaries 2: Royal Engagement previously held the record with an $8.5 million gross on August 11th of that year.

"I don't think anyone expected an R-rated comedy to post such an extraordinary number on a Wednesday and we were all caught by surprise by its strength," said Steve Elzer, Senior Vice President, Media Relations for Columbia via email, "We have been screening the film aggressively in the field for many weeks and knew it played great. Forgive the pun, but we were confident there was a good buzz building on Pineapple Express. But no one expected this result and I think the best is still ahead of us this weekend."

Joel Cohen, Executive Vice President and General Manager for Movietickets.com, also has high expectations for Express in the days to come.

The film sold its first ticket at Movietickets.com on May 30th, and continued to post solid sales in June and July. More recently, the anticipation for the film has been very obvious based on how dominant it has been on the site.

Pineapple Express sold 20 times as many tickets on Tuesday than it did on Monday and it matched those figures again from Tuesday to Wednesday. In addition, the film accounted for 50% of ticket sales on the site for both Tuesday and Wednesday.

It now looks as though the run of The Dark Knight finishing in first will come to an end.

The records keep coming for the The Dark Knight.

With a gross of $6.28 million yesterday, the film crossed the $400 million dollar mark and it was only the 18th day of its theatrical release. In order to understand how staggering this new record is, consider that Shrek 3 previously held the record as the fastest movie to hit $400 million and it did so in 43 days.

In the weeks to come, The Dark Knight is going to face strong competition from two high profile comedies, Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder as well as the animated Star Wars: The Clone Wars.

At this point, it looks as though hitting the $500 million mark is a sure thing for Knight, but it will fall short of Titanic's all-time record of $600.7 million domestically.

For the latest installment of our Exhibitor Profile Series, we were able to get in touch with George Solomon, CEO of Southern Theatres, LLC.

Having made several theatre acquisitions and even selling some of his own throughout his long career, Solomon is a true veteran of the exhibition industry. Over the years he has carried out his family’s name in his work and he currently owns theatres in eight states.

Solomon took the time out of his day to answer our questions about the industry as well as his own personal taste in movies.

How many years have you been in the exhibition industry?

“All my life. My family has been in the business since the’30s. My father, T.G. Solomon, started with Gulf States. [He] was considered a pioneer in the drive-in business in the late ’40s and ’50s."

How did you get started in the business?

"Like my dad, I always wanted to work in the business; it was a family business."

Do you remember the first movie you saw in theatres?

"(Laughs) I really cannot. I’ve gone to movies all my life."

What is your favorite movie of all-time?

"Probably Titanic."

What are your fondest memories of working in the exhibition industry?

"Several. Reopening an old theater in downtown Bogalusa in Louisiana in 1973, opening a new twin in that town in 1974; I suppose selling in 1986 to United Artists, selling in 2002 to AMC."

As a theatre owner, how do you deal with competition from bigger chains?

"We don’t have a lot of competition. We’re generally far enough away from others, even in the same city, that we don’t really need to worry about that."

How do you market to your customers?

"We try to sell at a lower price than the national average. We pride our theaters on being maintained cleaner and well-kept."

What movies are you looking forward to seeing in the future?

“I’d say the 3D movies in general, Disney’s Bolt coming this Thanksgiving season and Dreamworks’ Monsters vs. Aliens due out next March.”

When Pineapple Express hits theatres this Wednesday it will bring with it a little more pedigree than most "stoner comedies."

Judd Apatow, who is now the most prolific and often the most successful comedy kingpin working in showbiz today, is not only serving as a producer on the film but he also has a "story by" credit. Adding to the drawing power of Express is star Seth Rogen, who has become a very bankable comedy actor over the last couple of years.

While not all of the projects that Apatow has produced have been wildly successful, see Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story and Drillbit Taylor, his track record is pretty solid when Rogen appears onscreen.

Yet with an R rating and a plot that revolves around consuming massive amounts of marijuana, Express will have to struggle a little bit to reach the kind of mainstream audience that helped Apatow's Knocked Up gross $219 million worldwide.

Stoner comedies tend to fall under the category of cult successes. They are made for little money and when they show returns that would normally be considered weak for many studio films, they are still considered strong performers.

Take for instance this year's Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay. The sequel to 2004's Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle brought in $38.1 million domestically, but it was still considered a success because it cost only $12 million to make and it is sure to do brisk business now that it's available on DVD.

In 1998, Half Baked helped reinvigorate the stone comedy. It has gained a massive following through DVD, but it made only $17.3 million domestically during its theatrical run.

Pineapple Express should make more in its first weekend than Half Baked did in its entire theatrical run and that speaks volumes about just how much of a draw Seth Rogen and Judd Apatow have become. They have brought crude comedies into the mainstream again in a big way.

In an inventive marketing turn, Lionsgate is allowing prestigious art schools across the country to design posters for their upcoming film, The Spirit.

The Spirit is directed by Frank Miller, the creator of 300 and Sin City, and it is an adaptation of the popular comic by Will Eisner. Gabriel Macht, Scarlett Johansson, Samuel L. Jackson, Eva Mendes and Jaime King make up the ensemble cast.

The following art colleges were invited to take part in the designing process:

The Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandise in Los Angeles
School of the Art Institute of Chicago
The Art Institute of New York
The Art Institute of California - San Francisco
The Art Institute of California - San Diego
Miami Ad School
The Art Institute of Washington
The Art Institute of Philadelphia
The New England Institute of Art

With the growing popularity of viral marketing, it comes as no surprise that Lionsgate would make the decision to put at least part of the marketing blitz for The Spirit in the hands of somebody other than industry professionals.

After the success of The Dark Knight, which heavily utilized unconventional viral marketing techniques, more studios other than Lionsgate are bound to follow suit with similar campaigns.

The first poster to be released comes from the The Art Institute of California - San Diego.

When The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emporer opens this Friday, Brendan Fraser's Rick O'Connell will have to do battle with a new villain.

Martial arts superstar Jet Li enters the picture this time around as Emporer Han and the actor joins a handful of newcomers to the franchise including director Rob Cohen, actresses Maria Bello and Michelle Yeoh and actor Luke Ford as a more grown-up Alex O'Connell.

This is the second movie of 2008 for Li, who was seen earlier this year alongside Jackie Chan in The Forbidden Kingdom which was able to bring in $100 worldwide.

Considering that The Mummy and The Mummy Returns boast a combined gross of $832 million worldwide, Emporer has the potential to start August off on a high note.

Yet the question remains as to whether or not Li's presence will help bring in a bigger audience and even advance the Mummy universe.

Li hasn't exactly been on fire lately, and he has experienced disappointing domestic returns on his last couple of films. While Forbidden Kingdom didn't do as well as it could have given the pairing of Li and Chan, 2007's War made only $22.48 million in America and 2006's Jet Li's Fearless faired just as poorly with a domestic gross of only $24.6 million.

However, Li may bring a more diverse, worldwide audience to the Mummy franchise since he has proven to be a strong draw throughout the world. For proof, look no further than 2002's Hero which brought in nearly $170 million worldwide, and only $53 million of that tally came from domestic receipts.

In addition, Li may have more at stake than just the returns on this particular film. If Emporer catches on and his character becomes popular, then there could be a spinoff film.

After his scene-stealing turn in 2001's The Mummy Returns, Dwayne Johnson (who was then still billed by his wrestling alias, "The Rock") was given his own film, The Scorpion King. King grossed a solid $90 million domestically and it gave Johnson a push toward a more successful film career.