Flying high

I think Gable still probably comes out ahead in the box office race. The population numbers are relative, not only because 2008's national population is over twice 1939's. Your accounting doesn't account for the release patterns of 1939.
GetW's first weekend wasn't in 4,000 theatres playing to a possible audience of 300 million. It premiered in Atlanta (potential audience: 800,000, ignoring segregation, which likely shrinked the potential audience considerably) at prices much higher than $.23. If it made nearly a million dollars under those conditions, it must've played to something like a quarter of the population. To compete, Batman would've had to play to something like 75 million people.If you meant it's first weekend in "wide release" that still means only the biggest theatre or two in the biggest US cities. I think I read it was on something like 150 screens in Feb 40 after road-showing from its December premiere. In that case, the larger percentage of a smaller available audience still applies and GwtW almost certainly comes out ahead.Of course, Dark Knight is still clearly the best movie ever under other measures. 
 

 Good Grief!  I am disappointed that people are voting this as the best movie ever.  There are scores of films to choose from.  Clearly, people who think this have limited knowledge of the classics, and/or the shortest attention span humanly possible.  Isn't the test of a great movie whether or not it is still great long after it's release?  Isn't that what makes films like Gone With the Wind, Citizan Kane, Scareface, and Vertigo (one of my own personal favorites) so great:  the fact that people still watch them and think they are great after 20 plus years?  So if this vote were 20 years down the road it might be more valid.  Next year the masses will probably think that some other movie is the greatest, and Dark Knight will be forgotten.