International - Batman battles on

Warner Bros' The Dark Knight's worldwide gross is still ticking off the key box-office milestones, crossing $400m in international markets and $500m domestically.

The $1bn worldwide gross is tantalisingly close and the film held on to the top spot of Screen's international chart.

The highest new entry in this week's chart is Japan's Twentieth Century Boys, which, along with Spri's Hancock, finally managed to topple Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea from its six-week long reign at the top in Japan.

Hayao Miyazaki's animation, which played to critical acclaim in the Venice Film Festival competition last week (see review, p22), dropped to 11th position in the international chart.

Distributed by Toho, Twentieth Century Boys is the first part of Japanese broadcaster NTV's high-budget trilogy based on Naoki Urasawa's award-winning sci-fi manga. The film took $5.8m from 310 screens, and boasted the week's highest screen average - a sizeable $18,627.

Hancock bounded 19 places back up the chart after its Japanese debut, providing $7.8m of the $8.7m that it added to its cumulative gross of $353.6m.

Spri's Step Brothers was the highest new entry from the US, reaching 15th after opening solely in the UK, where it debuted at number one. The comedy starring Will Ferrell and John C Reilly took $3.3m from 362 screens, averaging at $9,175.

CJ Entertainment's The Divine Weapon reached almost $1.4m at the South Korean box office this weekend, putting it at 27th position.

Three other new entries appeared in this week's chart, with India's music-orientated Rock On taking $1.1m, Jose Luis Cuerda's The Blind Sunflowers opening in Spain for $977,765 and Russia's sci-fi action film Terra Nova taking $931,416, reaching positions 31, 38 and 39 respectively.