Surprise, surprise, The Dark Knight has blown all expectations out of the water. But, in reality, it hasn’t, not really, especially considering that most of us were suggesting that it was going to blow all expectations out of the water. One need only take a quick squiz over the internets this past weekend, to see the massive journalistic frenzy over TDK‘s box office blitz.

So far, sitting here in Australia land (where we’ve had the movie since last Wednesday), and where it’s about midday on the west coast of the U.S., the movie has raked in an estimated $155 million. This gives The Dark Knight the honor of taking the biggest opening weekend intake of any movie, beating out Spider-man 3 by some $4 million.

But TDK isn’t just doing well at the box office either. IMDB‘s top 250 movies of all time sees TDK sitting pretty at number 1, with a 9.5. Now, /Film followed this from early, and with only 4,591 votes counted it had rated a 9.7. They assumed it would drop back down to a more reasonable spot with more votes to even things out. It might have dropped .2 points, but no spots, with 23,611 votes counted.

And over at Rotten Tomatoes, TDK has notched up an average rating of 8.5, with 94% on the “tomatometer.”

Back to the box office though, and TDK looks like it will come away with a few more prizes this weekend. Its $66 million opening day (Friday) gives it the biggest opening day in history, and the amount of midnight showings blitzed the previous record for Star Wars: Episode III: Revenge of the Sith, with TDK apparently racking up some $17 million in midnight sessions alone.

TDK‘s success also spelled doom for other movies, especially Hellboy II: The Golden Army. The movie, which debuted last week at number one with $35 million, was doomed to suffer from TDK mania. So much so, in fact, that I am utterly baffled that they released it when they did. Especially considering that the Australian release — not a small market — is late August.

Hellboy II dropped 70% from last week, hitting fifth on the ladder, after Hancock and Journey to the Center of the Earth which took 3 and 4, respectively.

The second spot on the ladder belongs to the second movie that opened this weekend, Mamma Mia!, which managed to take in a respectable $27.6 million. This was a good move from Universal, which provided an alternative to the big blockbuster action pic in debuting alongside TDK.

Space Chimps was the other newbie this weekend, clocking in at number seven, with $7 million.

Next week, in another surprise debut, considering that surely TDK will continue to dominate, The X-Files: I Want to Believe will debut. This movie will be playing to very much the same crowd that TDK has been all weekend, so I question the move. Won’t moviegoers either be burnt out, or heading back to TDK after their work week has finished?

Either way, in a few weeks, we have The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor, Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and Babylon A.D. to come, with maybe only The Clone Wars in mid August taking some of that TDK crowd in. We also have the comedies Pineapple Express and Tropic Thunder coming up, both of which promised to do well at the box office.

I look forward to tallying up just how each of the comic book/superhero/geeky movies this summer has done, and what we might expect from the DVD sales.

As always, statistics thanks to Box Office Mojo.