"Tropic Thunder" Beats "Dark Knight," But Batman Beats Star Wars

LOS ANGELES (AP) _ It took four of Hollywood's biggest stars to take down Batman. The DreamWorks-Paramount comedy "Tropic Thunder" _ with Ben Stiller, Robert Downey Jr., Jack Black and Tom Cruise _ debuted at No. 1 with $26 million, bumping "The Dark Knight" to second place after four weekends on top, according to studio estimates Sunday. The Warner Bros. Batman flick pulled in $16.8 million to raise its total to $471.5 million. "The Dark Knight" passed the original "Star Wars" ($461 million) and now stands as No. 2 on the all-time domestic charts, behind only "Titanic" ($600.8 million). Taking inflation into account, "The Dark Knight" trails both movies in actual tickets sold, however. "The Dark Knight" would need to gross about $900 million to match the number of admissions for "Titanic" and about $1.2 billion to equal "Star Wars." Warner Bros. expects "The Dark Knight" to top out at about $530 million domestically, said Dan Fellman, the studio's head of distribution. "The Dark ... (link)