After break­ing the record for open­ing in the most the­aters nation­wide (4,366 of them), Bat­man has now achieved the record for high­est gross­ing mid­night sales. Last night TDK took a whop­ping esti­mated $18.5 mil­lion — NOT includ­ing the 3am and 6am screen­ings! This breaks the pre­vi­ous record set by Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. To put this into some con­text, Bat­man Begins made $15m on its first day whilst the high­est sin­gle day open­ing belongs to Spider-man 3 at $59.8m.

You may want to take these fig­ures into account when pre­dict­ing The Dark Knight’s week­end gross.

Source: Vari­ety:

Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight” grossed the most ever for mid­night shows, rack­ing up an esti­mated $18.5 million.

The follow-up to 2005’s “Bat­man Begins” out­stripped the pre­vi­ous mid­night record set by Fox’s “Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith” which grossed $16.9 mil­lion from 3,663 venues. “Sith” went on to make $50 mil­lion in its first day, which was a Thurs­day. The high­est sin­gle day open­ing record is cur­rently held by Sony’s “Spider-man 3″ which made $59.8 million.

“Dark Knight” unspooled in a record num­ber of sites — 4,366 — out­strip­ping the wide bow of Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” which touted a the­ater count of 4,362.

Warner Bros. reported that the $18.5 mil­lion did not include 3:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M.

“Bat­man Begins” opened on June 15, 2005, a Wednes­day, earn­ing $15.1 mil­lion in its first day. Both “Bat­man Begins” and “The Dark Knight” are directed by Christo­pher Nolan.

As for the mid­night shows them­selves, they looked like a laugh — pic­tures by tech1987, Bren­dan Falkowskiand Clev­er­grrl

The Rejects Report over at Film School Rejects have put their money on a week­end gross of $136 mil­lion. This seems like a pretty good base­line to start out pre­dic­tions — the record, biggest ever open­ing week­end was set by Spider-man 3 at $156 mil­lion, sec­ond is Dead Man’s Chest at $135m fol­lowed by Shrek The Third on $121m (Source: Box Office Mojo).

The Dark Knight has already bro­ken one record, open­ing in the most theaters:

The film’s more than 4,366 domes­tic play­dates is a record, sur­pass­ing the 4,362 the­aters for May 2007’s bow of “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End.” Dou­ble– and triple-screening at many venues means “Dark Knight” will play on 9,200 screens in the U.S. and Canada.

Its engage­ments include 94 Imax venues — Nolan shot long seg­ments using Imax-format cam­eras — and most of those giant-screen audi­to­ri­ums were sold out by mid­week. A Warn­ers exec esti­mated that Imax pre­sales totaled $3.5 mil­lion, with advance tick­et­ing for other venues adding con­sid­er­ably to that total.

— Hol­ly­wood Reporter

Rejects ques­tion why Mamma Mia was released the same week­end as TDK — I’d say to cap­ture all those girl­friends and moth­ers that do not fancy a gritty action flick yet are being dragged to the the­aters by their wide-eyed male coun­ter­parts look­ing to get their Joker fix. A quick dash, a fork split, you watch this and I’ll watch that sort of thing — shame they’ll be wait­ing a good 45 min­utes after their movie has fin­ished, with the Dark Knight clock­ing in at 152 mins.

I’m going to stick my neck out and go for an open­ing of $157m, because I am an opti­mist and Spider-man 3 deserves knock­ing off the top spot.

Place your bets now… (sorry, no prizes on this one, I haven’t got any free stuff to giveaway!)

Before an offi­cial title has been released for the sequel to The Dark Knight, what should we refer to it as?

Bat­man Begins 3
The Dark Knight 2
Chris Nolan’s 3rd Bat­man Film
The Dark Knight Sequel

What are your suggestions?

The first votes are in for The Dark Knight on IMDB, and it has scored a whop­ping 9.7/10 hit­ting the 4th best movie of all time spot in their top 250 movies list with 4,500 votes. Obvi­ously this rat­ing will go down as ‘nor­mal peo­ple’ begin to watch the movie and cast their votes to increase the sam­ple size — but damn! That is impressive.

Rot­ten Toma­toes also have the movie sit­ting pretty at 94% over 154 reviews.

Only a few hours now until the Dark Knight is released in the­aters across the coun­try! For those lucky enough to have pre-booked tick­ets in time for tonight, it’s the moment you’ve all been wait­ing for!

Remem­ber, remem­ber, Expe­ri­ence it in IMAX.

Movie Chron­i­cles will be right here for the sequel.

If any­one head­ing to the Lon­don BFI IMAX show­ing next Thurs­day fan­cies meet­ing up, drop me a line.

The BBC have posted an arti­cle from The Dark Knight’s pre­mière, cit­ing quotes from the cast and crew pay­ing trib­ute to the late heath Ledger and his per­for­mance as The Joker. (Video avail­able on the BBC site)

“It’s the best per­for­mance of a vil­lain I have seen. […] My feel­ing is that he will get a nom­i­na­tion, I would be very sur­prised if he didn’t get the Oscar — he has my vote any­way,” — Sir Michael Caine

“I haven’t seen a vil­lain like this, or a bad guy like this, since Den­nis Hop­per played Frank Booth in Blue Vel­vet — this out-scares Han­ni­bal Lecter.” — Gary Oldman

“What we wanted to do was cre­ate a vil­lain that’s iconic and ter­ri­fy­ing, I think, but also rec­og­niz­ably human. And I think Heath does that in a very inter­est­ing way — I think peo­ple are going to be blown away.” — Chris Nolan

“He’s cre­ated this anar­chic, Sid Vicious-like, punk rock Joker, unlike any Joker that’s been seen before. I think it’s a real clas­sic por­trayal that will be remem­bered for ages. It is tragic he is not here, but I am here to see his tal­ents and cel­e­brate it and I hope every­body will.” — Chris­t­ian Bale

“I’m so sad he’s not here with us and doing these inter­views right now, but we are going to hon­our him tonight.” — Aaron Eckhart

The Dark Knight’s Bat pod and pos­si­bly Bat­man Begins’ Tum­bler (although we’ve not seen it on loca­tion yet) are tour­ing and we have the final tour dates for you, via Film School Rejects:

SUNDAY, JULY 13, 2008 Nia­gara Falls, NY

See the Bat-Pod and Bat Tum­bler at the Nia­gara Falls State Park

MONDAY, JULY 14, 2008 New York City

See the Bat-Pod live on the Today Show
See the Bat-Pod and Bat Tum­bler on the red car­pet at AMC Lin­coln Square IMAX

WEDNESDAY, JULY 16, 2008 Chicago

See the Bat-Pod and Bat Tum­bler at the Navy Pier – Crys­tal Gar­den
See the Bat-Pod and Bat Tum­bler at the Chris Nolan Gala Event at Navy Pier

SATURDAY, JULY 18, 2008 Los Angeles

See the Bat-Pod all week at the Arclight Hol­ly­wood Theater/Cinerama Dome

The WSS Over­ture count­down has ended, and with it the Joker has brought down his mad­ness upon all of the Gotham City viral web­sites, splat­ter­ing them with flood and defac­ing them with mis­chie­vous messages.

On each of these pages a puz­zle piece with a let­ter was left, com­bin­ing all the pieces the phrase “Kick­ing and Screen­ing” can be found, which leads to the next Why So Seri­ous page,

www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​k​i​c​k​i​n​g​a​n​d​s​c​r​e​e​n​i​ng/

Note the play on words, “Screen­ing” — the prize — Free tick­ets to an IMAX pre-release Dark Knight screen­ing on July 15th!. As quickly as they appeared they have now SOLD OUT.

AND HERE WE GO!!!

“You’ve played your part, here are your just rewards. Meet at the ren­de­vous points below. Don’t be late, don’t for­get your ticket or heads will roll. Casual attire, smiles optional.”

Sold Out Chicago, Cin­e­mark IMAX (Woodridge) 9:30pm
Sold Out New York, Pal­isades IMAX (West Nyack) 9:00pm
Sold Out Edmon­ton, Sil­ver City IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Pitts­burg, Cin­e­mark IMAX (Tar­en­tum) 9:30pm
Sold Out Kansas City, Stu­dio IMAX (Olathe) 9:00pm
Sold Out Phoenix, Deer Val­ley IMAX 9:00pm
Sold Out San Fran­cisco, Metreon IMAX 9:00pm
Sold Out Los Ange­les, Uni­ver­sal City IMAX 9:00pm
Sold Out Las Vegas, Palms IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Min­neapo­lis, Met­ro­pol­i­tan IMAX (St. Michael) 9:30pm
Sold Out Dal­las, Cin­e­mark IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Toronto, Sco­tia­bank IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Salt Lake City, Jor­dan Com­mons IMAX (Sandy) 9:30pm
Sold Out Grand Rapids, Cel­e­bra­tion IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Atlanta, Mall of Geor­gia IMAX (Buford) 9:45pm
Sold Out Den­ver, Col­orado Cen­ter IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Hous­ton, Marq*e IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Orlando, Pointe IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Port­land, Bridge­port IMAX (Tigard) 9:45pm
Sold Out San Diego, Mira Mesa IMAX 9:45pm
Sold Out Omaha, Star IMAX (Coun­cil Bluffs) 9:30pm
Sold Out Indi­anapo­lis, Show­place IMAX 9:30pm
Sold Out Boston, Com­cast IMAX (Nat­ick) 7:00pm
Sold Out Seat­tle, Boe­ing IMAX 7:30pm

An email was also sent out shortly before­hand via Human Resources:

http://​www​.whysose​ri​ous​.com/​k​i​c​k​i​n​g​a​n​d​s​c​r​e​e​n​ing HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA ha HA HA HA ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha HA ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA ha HA HA ha ha ha HA HA HA HA HA HA ha ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA ha ha HA ha HA ha HA HA HA HA HA ha ha ha HA HA HA HA ha HA HA HA ha HA HA HA HA ha HA ha

Thanks to every­one that sent this in! Hope you got your tick­ets in time! (We poor brits miss out again it seems — we’re get­ting the movie a week later anyway).

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