On Thursday, August 11, Batman Begins very quietly eclipsed the $200M domestic box-office mark, coming in as the 12th highest grossing film for the day in its 9th week of release. The $200M figure is good enough to make the film the year?s third highest grossing movie (domestically) after Star Wars: Episode III, and War of the Worlds.

With a current overseas total of $160M, the film will likely wind up with somewhere under $370M overall. The film?s estimated budget was $150M.

While the film did not pull in what today is considered mega-blockbuster figures comparable to the Spider-Man films, or Tim Burton?s first Batman ($251M in 1989 dollars, approximately $402M adjusted for inflation), the darker, PG-13 film didn?t appear to be built for universal appeal and repeat business by younger audiences, often the driving force behind huge box office success. Though it still may nearly double the grosses of the previous Batman big-screen effort, Batman & Robin, which left the once seemingly invulnerably bankable franchise moribund for years.

With nearly universal critical praise and excellent word-of-mouth buzz, Warner Bros.? hope at this time is the film finds an even larger audience on DVD this fall, Pay-per-View and Cable. The studio will be looking for a sequel (which will likely have the appearance of the Joker as an additional draw) to follow the same pattern as films like Blade and X-Men at the box office ? films that were unknown quantities and accepted by moviegoers cautiously at first, but through success on DVD, Pay-per-View, and Cable built on their initial audience and had significantly more box office success with their first sequels.