Batman sequel “The Dark Knight” kept up its record-breaking pace this weekend, pushing its total receipts since opening to a stunning 313.8 million dollars, box office tracker Exhibitor Relations said.

Director Christopher Nolan’s follow-up to 2005’s “Batman Begins,” with Christian Bale in the lead and the late Heath Ledger as the villainous Joker, topped the previous second-weekend record of “Shrek 2″, with 75.2 million in ticket sales over the Friday-Sunday period, final figures showed.

That followed its record for a debut weekend, when it overtook previous mark-holder “Spider-Man 3″ with an unprecedented 158.4 million dollars in seats sold.

The film is helped by the buzz over Ledger’s performance, who died of an accidental drug overdose in New York in January, with many industry experts speculating that he may win a rare posthumous Oscar for the role.

Far back in second place was “Step Brothers,” a Will Farrell-starring comedy of two middle-aged men still living at home when their respective widowed parents meet and get married.

On its opening weekend “Step Brothers,” directed by Adam McKay, sold 30.1 million dollars in tickets, Exhibitor Relations said.

Third was the ABBA musical “Mamma Mia” with a take of 17.8 million in its second weekend, followed in fourth by “The X-Files: I Want to Believe,” which took in 10.2 million on its opening weekend.

In fifth place was “Journey to the Center of the Earth 3D,” which earned 9.7 million in its third week.

Rounding out the top 10 in the final figures for the weekend were the Will Smith action flick “Hancock,” earning 8.3 million to take its four-week total to 206.5 million; the acclaimed animation “Wall-E,” 6.4 million for a five week take of 195.3 million; “Hellboy II” (5.1 million); “Space Chimps” (4.5 million); and “Wanted” (2.7 million).

With “The Dark Knight’s” smashing run, Exhibitor Relations said that movie theater ticket sales so far this year hit 5.84 billion dollars, barely behind last year’s figure for the same period of 5.85 billion dollars.

Good or bad, actor Harrison Ford will not be reading reviews of the new Indiana Jones movie, which divided the Cannes film festival’s notoriously picky critics.

“Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” had its world premiere at the annual festival on Sunday, and initial reaction was positive.

But with a little more time to reflect on a blockbuster that cost an estimated $185 million to make, reviews have become decidedly more mixed.

“I suppose it would be interesting, but I don’t read reviews,” Ford told Reuters in an interview to promote the film.

“I don’t want to believe the bad stuff and I don’t want to believe the good stuff. It doesn’t really matter,” added Ford, who reprises probably his most famous on-screen role as the whip-wielding archaeologist at the age of 65.

In Crystal Skull, he teams up again with Karen Allen, his co-star from the first Indiana Jones film in 1981.

They are up against an evil KGB agent, played by Australia’s Cate Blanchett, who is seeking to harness the power of a skull which leads them on a high-octane adventure ending with a dramatic encounter with extra terrestrials.

Reviews appearing on the Internet within minutes of the end of the press screening in Cannes were largely positive.

Several, though, have since questioned the wisdom of resurrecting a successful franchise which last hit the screens 19 years ago.

It was up, up and away at the boxoffice in 2007. Boxoffice swelled at home and abroad — but so did the costs of making and marketing movies, which grew at an even faster rate.

Domestic boxoffice returns from the U.S. and Canada hit a record $9.6 billion last year, a 5.4% increase over 2006, according to the final figures released Wednesday by the MPAA in its annual state-of-the-business report, which for the first time it compiled in partnership with Nielsen EDI. The figure represents grosses for all commercial releases in North America, not just those of the MPAA companies.

The story was much the same around the world as international boxoffice for all commercial moviegoing hit $17.1 billion, up nearly 5% from 2006. That brought the worldwide boxoffice total for 2007 to a record $26.7 billion. The MPAA companies’ portion of that total international tally of $17.1 billion in grosses was nearly $9.5 billion.

“All in all, 2007 proved a healthy year at the boxoffice,” MPAA chairman and CEO Dan Glickman said. “We had a very good year domestically,” while the international returns were “also bullish.”

But though more money was flowing into Hollywood, more money also was flowing out.

The studios’ investment in the average movie’s negative cost rose to $70.8 million from $65.8 million in 2006. And since the MPAA doesn’t include the outside investment money that the studios now routinely solicit to co-finance many of their films in that calculation, the average production cost of a movie actually is substantially higher than that.

At the same time, the average marketing costs on a film rose from $34.5 million in 2006 to $35.9 million in 2007. As a result, the total average negative and marketing figure also hit a record: a forbidding $106.6 million.

The outlays on the part of the studios’ specialty divisions were even more dramatic. While the divisions that turn out potential Oscar winners — such as Disney’s Miramax, Paramount’s Vantage, Universal’s Focus and Fox’s Searchlight — may concentrate on producing, acquiring and releasing “smaller” movies, in their case, small is a relative term.

The subsidiaries’ average negative investment in 2007 rose to $49.2 million, while average marketing costs soared to $25.7 million. The total negative and marketing cost of the average specialty film soared to $74.8 million, up more than 54% over the comparable 2006 figure of $48.5 million.