The Dark Knight battered the competition in the summer movie market, topping the half-billion-dollar mark.

Warner Bros.

Quick! What was the top movie of the busy summer season?

No contest there. Having just topped the half-billion-dollar line — and that’s in the United States and Canada alone — the answer of course is The Dark Knight.

It is now second only to Titanic, which raked in more than $600 million domestically, although it took Titanic three months to reach $500 million. The Dark Knight, fueled by good reviews, good word of mouth, and the final performance of Heath Ledger, which everyone wanted to see, reached that lofty height after a little less than seven weeks in theaters. The Associated Press, quoting box office tracker Media by the Numbers, said The Dark Knight took in one-eighth of Hollywood’s overall summer returns of $4.2 billion, a figure that just edged out last year’s record $4.18 billion in ticket sales. (With today’s higher admission prices, however, it would take a box office total of $900 million for The Dark Knight to match the number of tickets sold by Titanic.)

But The Dark Knight wasn’t the only big winner of the summer, which saw some surprise hits, as well as some big losers.

Perhaps the biggest surprise was that the much-hyped Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull failed to be the top box office winner. Oh, it certainly did well enough, taking in $315 million domestically, yet that fell $1 million short of the total ratcheted up by that other big summer hit, Iron Man. Nevertheless, according to Media by the Numbers, Indy has come out on top, having taken in an additional $465 million internationally, compared to Iron Man’s $253 million, although neither film is yet totally played out.

Even with its mighty totals, however, Indy failed to be the number one box office draw for longer than its first week, falling in its second week to Sex and the City. Fueled by advance expectations, Sex had the best opening weekend ($57 million) of all time for a romantic comedy and the number five opening for an R-rated film.

Other summer hits include Kung Fu Panda ($212 million domestically; an additional $363 million internationally); Disney’s Wall•E ($216 million; $126 million); Get Smart ($127 million; $75 million); Will Smith’s Hancock ($226 million; $343 million); Angelina Jolie’s Wanted ($133.7 million; $124 million); Mamma Mia! ($132.5 million; $206 million), and The Strangers ($52.5 million; $2.6 million).

The take for The Strangers may not sound like so much, but when you figure that the creepy house invasion movie cost only $9 million to make, it was a bonanza. That was certainly better than the haul of the early summer entry The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian, which took in $141 million domestically, but cost $200 million to make. That film was saved by its international take of more than $228 million, however. Results were similar for The Incredible Hulk. It earned $134 million domestically, but cost $137.5 million to make, although the foreign release earned it another $111.5 million.

Other films just scraping the $100-million mark domestically, once considered the bench mark for a hit, are Will Ferrell’s Step Brothers ($98 million); Adam Sandler’s You Don’t Mess With the Zohan ($99.4 million); The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor ($98.6 million); Journey to the Center of the Earth ($95 million); Tropic Thunder ($87 million and still going strong); Hellboy II: The Golden Army ($74.6 million); Pineapple Express ($81 million), and What Happens in Vegas ($80 million).

It wasn’t all roses, however. Big losers included Speed Racer, which took in $44 million domestically and $45 million foreign, although it cost $120 million to make. This was the case of a movie based on a middling, long-ago animated TV show that was not remembered fondly by most people.

The public proved once again to be immune to political movies as well, not even one couched in terms of a family drama and starring Kevin Costner. They stayed away in droves from Swing Vote ($14.6 million).

M. Night Shyamalan continued his downward spiral post-The Sixth Sense. His The Happening, about a worldwide plague, took in $64 million domestically, but cost $60 million to produce, though it added $95 million internationally.

No one seemed terribly interested in a new X-Files outing. The X-Files: I Want to Believe took in only $20.5 million domestically on its $35-million budget, although it earned an additional $32.6 million abroad.

But that was a big hit when compared to the $11.5 million ($22.7 million internationally) earned by Eddie Murphy’s Meet Dave, which cost $60 million to make. Even Murphy didn’t show up for his film’s premiere. Apparently he was trying to tell us something . . . and we got the message.

mjanuson@projo.com