'Dark Knight' stays on top with $26M; 'Pineapple Express' is in 2nd place

LOS ANGELES - Batman was higher than Hollywood's newest pot heads.

"The Dark Knight" took in $26 one thousand thousand to finish as the No. 1 movie for the fourth straight weekend, beating the stoner comedy "Pineapple Express," which open in s place with $22.4 million, according to studio estimates Sunday.

The weekend haulage lifted the Warner Bros. Batman sequel to No. 3 on the all-time domestic box office charts with $441.5 million, behind only "Titanic" ($600.8 million) and the original "Star Wars" ($461 million).

The last movie to stay No. 1 for four consecutive weekends was "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" in late 2003 and 2004, according to box-office tracker Media By Numbers. That movie did it during a a good deal slower time of year, with nowhere near the competition "The Dark Knight" has faced during Hollywood's busy summer season.

"It's about unheard of. Summer doesn't usually afford films that much of a wide-open playing field," said Paul Dergarabedian, president of Media By Numbers.

"The Dark Knight" should outperform "Star Wars" to become No. 2 on the revenue chart by this coming weekend.

However, the numbers reflect today's higher admission prices, and "The Dark Knight" will not glide path "Star Wars" or "Titanic" in terms of existent number of tickets sold. Taking inflation into accounting, "The Dark Knight" would need to pull in about $900 million to match the number of tickets sold for "Titanic" and around $1.2 billion to equal "Star Wars."

Even so, "The Dark Knight" has far outdone even its studio's expectations. Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros., said he would have been felicitous if the movie simply exceeded the $205 jillion domestic summate of its predecessor, "Batman Begins."

It should top out at $510 million to $520 trillion, Fellman said.

"It has taken on a life of its possess, and in doing so got so much overconfident press and word of mouth that older audiences who unremarkably don't