Director Christopher Nolan's second Caped Crusader tale has upped its cume to a jaw-dropping $261.6M in only eight days and broke the record for the fastest film to reach the quarter-billion mark. That benchmark was held by Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest which needed ten days back in July of 2006. Dark Knight now has its sights on shattering the $300M mark on Sunday after only ten days easily beating the current record, also held by Chest, of 16 days.

On Friday, Knight also became the highest-grossing Bruce Wayne movie of all time surpassing the $251.2M of 1989's Batman which also featured The Joker. The Michael Keaton-Jack Nicholson duel's tally would amount to roughly $420M at today's ticket prices, a figure that the new Christian Bale-Heath Ledger showdown should have no problem beating. Plus Dark Knight broke into the list of the Top 50 All-Time Domestic Blockbusters zooming up to number 39 in between Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets ($262M in 2002) and The Incredibles ($261.4M in 2004).

Given its Friday strength, Knight is on a trajectory to reach $72-76M this weekend sending its total skyrocketing to $311-315M by Sunday night. That would allow the film to match in a mere ten days the totals of this year's top-grossing blockbusters Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull which both stand at roughly $314M. No film in history has made so much money so fast and Knight looks to race past the $400M mark in its fourth weekend. Based on its continued popularity with moviegoers, the $180M-budgeted comic flick has a chance of eventually reaching a staggering $450-500M from North America alone becoming the number two blockbuster of all-time behind only Titanic's record $600.8M.

Among new films trying to carve out a slice of the box office pie in Batman's shadow, the Will Ferrell comedy Step Brothers bowed to solid results on Friday while the sci-fi sequel The X-Files: I Want to Believe found few believers and posted a dismal debut. Sony's sibling rivalry laugher grossed an estimated $11M in its first day of release giving the R-rated pic a solid start in the number two position. A weekend take of $28-31M seems likely which would double the disappointing $15.1M launch for Ferrell's last film Semi-Pro.

Fox's new X-Files installment learned the real truth out there - that only few of its fans really care about Mulder and Scully anymore. The PG-13 film failed to connect with its target audience and collected an estimated $4M on its way to what should be a three-day gross of $10-11M this weekend. But with a relatively low $30M pricetag, the losses should not hurt too much.

Among holdovers, Friday-to-Friday declines were only 42% for Mamma Mia!, 46% for Hancock, and 47% for Journey to the Center of the Earth.

For a NEW review of Step Brothers visit The Chief Report.

Be sure to check back on Sunday for a complete weekend box office report followed by continued daily coverage of The Dark Knight's record-breaking run all week long.