Released last July, The Dark Knight -- the second installment in director Christopher Nolan's latest adaptation of the Batman mythology -- continues to score box-office dollars. Distributed by Warner Brothers, a subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. (NYSE: TWX), the movie crossed the $1 billion mark late Friday, joining an elite quartet to pass this high-water mark.

Leading the list of top all-time box office grosses are Titanic ($1.84B), Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King ($1.12B), and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest ($1.07B).

More than half of Dark Knight's box-office dough ($533.1 million, to be specific) was earned domestically, while $468 million was collected from overseas theaters. Movie-watchers were driven to the theaters in droves due to stellar reviews, positive reaction to its predecessor (Batman Begins) and the shocking and premature death of costar Heath Ledger, who died last January.

General Electric's (NYSE: GE) Universal Pictures asset received some good news the other day -- 75% of the studio's movie projects for the next few years will be funded, in part, by a financing entity known as Relativity Capital. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the deal calls for Relativity to help cover production costs, but not marketing programs; it could see about $500 million spread out over as many as 45 movies. Also, this is being described as a bona fide partnership -- not only will Relativity share in profits generated by ancillary channels, such as home video and television sales, but it will also have the power to co-greenlight a project, and it will be able to review the talent and budget attached to each project.

Financing by hedge funds and private equity is certainly not new in Hollywood; it's been around for a long time. So has the practice of selling off international rights and partnerships between studio competitors. Remember James Cameron's Titanic? It took the studio segments of both Viacom (NYSE: VIA) and News Corp. (NYSE: NWS) to shoulder that costly celluloid endeavor. But, although I recognize that filmmaking is extremely risky, and that a flop is very much in the cards whether or not big stars are in a film, I also have to wonder if it might be better for studios to simply lessen their risk by making much cheaper movies and foregoing the distribution of risk. What's my beef with distribution of risk? Well, I'm not the first to say this, and it's pretty obvious at any rate: hedge your bet, and you also limit your upside score in terms of a windfall.

In April 1912, the RMS Titanic, a luxury passenger liner billed as unsinkable, took its maiden voyage and was felled by an iceberg. Lifeboats were scarce, and more than 1,500 passengers perished in the icy seas of the North Atlantic. The tragic irony of the surrounding circumstances are fit for a movie ... but we'll get to that later.

A Christie's auction in New York City last week featured memorabilia from the ill-fated voyage, including a lengthy handwritten description of the ordeal, penned by a 16-year-old survivor. The account, which mentions witnessing the "most terrible shrieks and groans from the helpless and doomed" from her perch in a lifeboat, attracted $16,800. The auction featured 18 lots in total, including telegrams, letters, and deck logs. In all, the products fetched $193,140. An original list of the first-class passengers aboard the ship fetched $48,000, surpassing pre-sale estimates.

Sunday night, flipping through cable stations, I came across James Cameron's epic blockbuster tribute to the sunken ship, which was released by News Corp.'s (NYSE: NWS) 20th Century Fox and Viacom's (NYSE: VIA) Paramount Pictures almost 10 years ago. It remains the highest-grossing film of all time, with worldwide box office receipts of over $1.8 billion.

I'll admit, with mild sheepishness, that I was among the throng of Titanic devotees that took multiple trips to the theater (my count was five) to follow the story of Jack and Rose. While it's a rare moment that I pull out my DVD to spend more than 3 hours in anticipation of a teary finale, it's still a good movie, made great through the performances of Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet before they were superstars.

Beth Gaston Moon is an analyst at Schaeffer's Investment Research.

Remember when James Cameron directed the Terminator movies and he was unequivocally regarded as awesome? Then he made this little period piece about some boat sinking, proclaimed himself "King of the World," which was perceived as arrogant but was really just a quote, traded in wives, and was never really heard from for nearly a decade.

So what's the best way to move back into the limelight? Find Jesus. And not in the same way that Stephen Baldwin has. The Oscar-winning filmmaker said yesterday that a group of stone boxes, originally discovered two decades ago within a hillside tomb in Jerusalem, once held the remains of Jesus Christ and Mary Magdalene.

Richard Parsons is one optimistic dude. The Time Warner CEO gave a positively rosy-hued speech at last week's shareholders meeting in Atlanta, with the reassuring statement that "our company is clearly undervalued."

Among other plans, Parsons believes he can rejuvenate AOL by increasing revenue from online advertising (some of our BloggingStocks readers, meanwhile, seem to think that  AOL's "certified" email program is also part of the plan to jump-start AOL).

And while he's made some bold moves -- slashing some 2,400 jobs, for instance -- the stock has remained relatively static.

Is it just me, or is Parsons' cheerfulness a bit like shuffling deck chairs on the Titanic? Or is it rather -- in Stephen Colbert's famous phrase -- like shuffling chairs on the Hindenberg?

Former Latin students of the world:

Salvete! I have good news!

No, your Latin teacher didn't actually give herself a lethal paper cut on your shoddy translation of Virgil's Aeneid. And, no, your local school board didn't finally decide that Latin was, in fact, "dead enough" to give up on trying to teach it.

But it's almost as good. Earlier today, Warner Bros. movie studio, a unit of Time Warner, announced plans to remake the old Latin class stand-by Clash of the Titans. The original feature film, which follows the codpiece-wearing hero, Perseus, as he fights monsters and Medusa, to save the beautiful Princess Andromeda. Andromeda, in typical princess style, spends most of the movie chained up to a rock, waiting to be rescued by the divinely chartered hero.