Dark Knight crowned King of box office

Batman topped Spider-Man as the king of Hollywood superheroes today, final box office figures showed.

The Dark Knight took a US box office record of $158.3m (€99.6m) in its opening weekend, beating the previous best of $151.1m (€95m) set by Spider-Man 3 in May last year.

The final figures, released today, were higher than the studio estimates and showed it was the biggest Hollywood weekend ever.

Dan Fellman, head of distribution for Warner Bros, which released the latest instalment of the caped crusader, predicted the Batman film would shoot past the $200m (€125.9m) mark by the end of the week.

“We knew it would be big, but we never expected to dominate the marketplace like we did,” he said.