Box Office Milestone: 'Dark Knight Rises' Becomes Year's No. 2 Film

Superheroes now claim the top two spots on the 2012 worldwide box-office chart.

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Warner Bros. and Legendary Pictures' The Dark Knight Rises passed Ice Age: Continental Drift on Sunday to become the No. 2 release of the year with a global gross of $732 million. Ice Age 4 has grossed nearly $716 million to date.

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Disney and Marvel's The Avengers ranks No. 1 with $1.46 billion -- the third-best showing of all time.

The big question now is whether Dark Knight Rises -- the final film in Christopher Nolan and Christian Bale's Batman trilogy, can match the $1 billion in grosses earned by The Dark Knight in 2008.

Domestically, Dark Knight Rises continues to trail Dark Knight at the same time during the latter's run -- the difference is currently $38 million -- but it did decline less in its third weekend than its predecessor did.

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Dark Knight Rises is making up for the difference overseas, where it is pacing more than 30 percent ahead of Dark Knight, earning $378.1 million to date.

To date, Dark Knight Rises has earned $353.9 million in North America, the third-biggest grosser of 2012 behind Avengers and Lionsgate's The Hunger Games. Box-office observers believe the film has left some amount of money on the table because of the July 20 theater shooting during a midnight screening of the movie in Aurora, Colo.