Wow. The Dark Knight made $155.34 million this weekend to set the all-time record for a movie opening beating Spider-Man 3’s $151.1 million mark set in May 2007. It’s impressive, but there’s one little problem: Spider-Man 3 probably still sold more tickets.

People may not like to hear that because The Dark Knight is an awesome movie, clearly much better than Spider-Man 3, but I think it’s important to note lest Hollywod keep raising ticket prices ridiculous amounts every year.

The average price of a movie ticket in 2007 (just last year) was $6.88. This year, it’s up 30 cents to $7.08. Piping those numbers into the weekend data, you get 21.96 million tickets sold for Spider-Man 3 versus 21.94 million for The Dark Knight, as the AP correctly notes.

Again I’d like to call on Hollywood to stop counting its record by money, and do it by tickets sold. All counting by money does is entice Hollywood and theaters to keep raising ticket prices.

A great chart to look at is Box Office Mojo’s All-Time list adjusted for inflation. While the #1 domestic release of all time is Titanic with over $600 million made in 1997, it’s only #6 on the adjusted for inflation list. #1 on that list is Gone With the Wind, which would have made $1.3 billion dollars at today’s ticket prices.

While both Iron Man and the new Indiana Jones are past the $300 million mark this year, neither would even be in the Top 100 films all-time yet with inflation taken into account (they are #22 and #23 respectively on the non-inflation all time list).

The biggest very recent movie on the all time list is Pirates of the Caribbean: Dean Man’s Chest which made $423 million in 2006, good for #6 all-time on the non-inflation list. So how does it fare on the inflation list? #43.

Perspective Hollywood. Get some. Count ticket sales, not money made.