‘The Batman’ Tops ‘Captain America 2’ And Nears ‘Suicide Squad’

It looks like The Batman has permanently entered the “under $1 million” club in terms of daily grosses. The Robert Pattinson/Zoe Kravitz-led flick earned another $955,000 on Monday, +19% from its $802,000 Monday gross. It lasted a full month with $1 million-plus daily grosses and now I imagine at least some of the stragglers will have committed to waiting until its HBO Max (and possibly PVOD) debut on April 19.

Anyway, with $350.9 million in raw domestic grosses, it has officially passed the $350.2 million domestic cume of American Sniper. Once it passes the $353 million cume of Furious 7 over the next few days, it’ll rank eighth among all “no fantasy” blockbusters, by which I mean action movies or dramas that don’t feature superpowers, interstellar travel. reconstituted dinosaurs, wizards, superpowers, talking robots or miraculous resurrections.

We can debate to what extent The Hunger Games ($408 million) or Catching Fire ($424 million) featured anything explicitly sci-fi/fantasy save for some weird animals that occasionally attack our heroes. Likewise, Iron Man 3 ($409 million) features a human hero and some villains who get skewed super-soldier powers from science gone awry, while Black Panther ($700 million) features only a single glorified steroid that gives its otherwise human hero (and villain) super-soldier like powers.

If you decide those four don’t count, then it’s The Batman, Furious 7, Chris Nolan’s two Dark Knight sequels ($448 million in 2012 and $533 million in 2008) and James Cameron’s Titanic ($652 million counting the 2012 3-D reissue). The Batman has already left Forrest Gump ($329 million in 1994), Skyfall ($304 million in 2012) and Home Alone ($285 million in 1990) in the unadjusted dust.

Yes, the inflation-adjusted list is a bit different because audiences once showed up for star-driven, non-fantasy flicks like Doctor Zhivago ($111 million in 1965), The Sting ($156 million in 1973) and Beverly Hills Cop ($234 million in 1984). Nowadays, the closest thing to a “real world” blockbuster involves Dominic Toretto, Ethan Hunt, James Bond or Bruce Wayne. Speaking of which, The Batman has already sold more tickets in North America than any 007 movies save for Goldfinger and Thunderball.

It’ll eventually catch up to the first two Mission: Impossible movies ($181 million in 1996/$375 million adjusted and $215 million in 2000/$366 million adjusted) and will eventually pass the $376 million adjusted gross of Furious 7. Ironically, the biggest-grossing straight (no violence/action) drama in global grosses is still Boehman Rhapsody, which earned $905 million in late 2018, hence the deluge of upcoming music biopics.

Assuming the 49/51 domestic/global split is still intact, The Batman has just passed the $714 million global cume of Captain America: The Winter Soldier. That one is also among the closest things Marvel has made to a “non-fantasy” flick, offering up a steroid-injected hero and villain amid an otherwise real-world “Tom Clancy with capes” action drama. Moreover, if/when The Batman passes $775 million, it’ll rank 17th worldwide (or 14th if you don’t count Catching Fire, Iron Man 3 and Black Panther) among “real world” movies.

If it reaches $800 million, it’ll pass Fast & Furious 6 and Mission: Impossible – Fallout to rank 15th (or 12th) among such non-fantasy live-action flicks. Oddly enough, the biggest grossing non-fantastical (but with a little violence) drama is… DC’s Joker ($1.073 billion without a penny from China), behind only Skyfall, Fate of the Furious, Furious 7 and Titanic. Amusingly enough, The Batman will pass Suicide Squad ($725 million also without China) sometime this week, again affirming that DC Films, sans pandemic and HBO Max variables, is still a box office force to be reckoned with.