DEBATE: What could beat THE DARK KNIGHT?

So here we go again, a couple of days short of 14 months since I last wrote this exact kind of article and I'm asking you guys the same question again. What could beat The Dark Knight as the highest grossing opening three day weekend of all time?

When I asked the same question about Spider-Man 3 which won the title last year, the only real contenders I gave were Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix and The Dark Knight from the movies on the horizon. I was proved right with one of those picks. Here are the current top 5 opening weekends of all time...

1. The Dark Knight - $155.3 million 2. Spider-Man 3 - $151.1 million 3. Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest - $135.6 million 4. Shrek the Third - $121.6 million 5. Spider-Man - $114.8 million

Looking at the franchises above, obviously the further continuations of both Pirates of the Caribbean and Spider-Man have a great shout, even if the last film in both series weren't all that spectacular. A fourth Pirates movie especially I think may struggle to be as popular as the previous one's with Keira Knightley and Orlando Bloom likely to "retire" from the flicks. I do think people still have a lot of interest in the Spidey character and it will only take a good looking trailer, plot or villain to get us excited about that series again. With the Shrek franchise currently going through a spin-off process, I wouldn't be particularly confident of that russling any feathers anytime soon Before Brett Ratner half put the sword through the successful X-Men franchise in 2006, that movie landed 9th on the all time opening weekends list and was building towards an epic opening for future films. Wolverine should still be popular next year but at the moment, a big money making ensemble X-Men pic with the original cast looks unlikely. Of course, the Harry Potter series is growing with each movie as we said last year. The last film, The Order of the Phoenix which was no doubt boosted by the added media hype at around the time of the final book's release earned an impressive $102 million opening weekend and it seems the longer the franchise exists the more popular it becomes. You would certainly expect the last movie in the franchise, especially being a "Part II" would be a big contender. Sequels to recent popular movies such as Iron Man ($98 million) and Transformers ($70 million) would have a chance, the former especially after the great successful of what Robert Downey Jr and Jon Favreau did with Tony Stark which delighted both critics and fans alike. Of course the future Avengers team-up, when all the characters like Thor and Captain America along with Iron Man, Nick Fury and Hulk are established will be like growing money off tree's. Same goes for a team-up of Batman and Superman, if Warner Bros. ever got their act together and got their other characters into a credible position, a future JLA movie would be a massive. That could make some incredible money the likes the box office have never seen. On the horizon, it's doubtful that Angels & Demons or Terminator Salvation: The Future Begins will give The Dark Knight anything to worry about but of course one movie that very much could is The Hobbit. By the time the first movie comes out, likely the very end of 2011 there will have been a big eight year gap of anticipation since The Return of the King, a movie which only (I say only! lol) made $76 million on it's three day opening weekend but the film went on to make $1.19 BILLION worldwide. And that's just the final saga of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Once word got out how good the movie was, it just took off, much like it has for Batman. I say with LOTR we could get a Star Wars situation where the absence and the time to let the trilogy settle has got so many more fans on board through home video and the like. I would say out of everything, The Hobbit has the best chance of movies currently in development that could knock Batman off his perch. I see nothing beating Batman between now and the end of this decade.