After the recent film­ing at the East­ern State Pen, the site’s offi­cial blog has updated with some details and images of the shoot.

We were thrilled to wel­come the cast and crew of Trans­form­ers 2 to East­ern State Penitentiary!

The sequel to last summer’s block­buster recently filmed scenes in East­ern State’s Cell­block 7 as well as out­side in the Indus­trial Build­ing Court­yard. You can see in the top photo the mas­sive helium-filled bal­loon light that was used to sim­u­late moon­light. The next photo shows the cast and crew on the set cre­ated at East­ern State. The final photo shows the car cast as “Bum­ble­bee” exit­ing East­ern State dur­ing filming.

While on site, Shia LaBoeuf, Megan Fox and Michael Bay enjoyed a tour of East­ern State includ­ing some areas used dur­ing Ter­ror Behind the Walls, includ­ing Cell­block 12, the home of Lock Down.

Here it comes, the one we have been wait­ing for — The Dark Knight has set the record for best ever sales on an open­ing week­end, reach­ing $155.34m — beat­ing Spider-man 3’s $151.1m.

We were hold­ing a straw poll on poten­tial week­end tak­ings, my Fri­day pre­dic­tion of $157m looks almost spot on , excellent!

“The Dark Knight” took in a record $155.34 mil­lion in its first week­end, said Dan Fell­man, head of dis­tri­b­u­tion for Warner Bros., which released the “Bat­man Begins” sequel.

That topped Hollywood’s pre­vi­ous best of $151.1 mil­lion, set by “Spider-Man 3″ in May 2007.

Source: AP, thanks Keith!

EDIT: Looks like the final fig­ures have been clar­i­fied — the WB had pre­vi­ously esti­mated $155.3m, it instead took in a record $158.4m, after tal­ly­ing Sunday’s fig­ures. It also set the record for an IMAX opener, earn­ing $6.2 mil­lion from 94 IMAX theaters.

We pre­vi­ously reported that The Dark Knight had moved into IMDB’s top movie of all time list — enter­ing at num­ber 4. After another day of screen­ing it moved up to 3, but today it hit the big one — with an aver­age score of 9.5 from reg­u­lar IMDB vot­ers The Dark Knight took the top spot. No doubt this is tem­po­rary and after the ini­tial flut­ter of activ­ity the caped cru­sader shall fall and set­tle some­where fur­ther down, much like Return of the King did — but this is too damn cool not to report!

After 23,000 votes, Bat­man still has an aver­age score of 9.7!

Help us Digg this!

Thanks Josh!

We’d hoped this might hap­pen — after set­ting the mid­night sales record at $18.5m, it looked inevitable that The Dark Knight would go on to beat Spider-man 3’s record of $59.8m. Vari­ety tells us that early reports put The Dark Knight at between $60m and $63m from a record 4366 theaters.

We’re $60m up, just $90m to go to beat that week­end record set by Spidey. Still time to make your pre­dic­tions.

EDIT: Record con­firmed at $66.4m, smash­ing Spider-man’s $59m! Source: AP

More and more crit­ics are pour­ing on the praise, and wo’ betide us not to report them!

AICN’s Harry:

I’m late weigh­ing in on this here DARK KNIGHT pic­ture show dealio. The film is, in fact, superb in every way. A vast improve­ment on BATMAN BEGINS – amaz­ing what hap­pens when you no longer have to deal with an ori­gin story and sat­is­fy­ing only the mer­chan­diz­ing inter­ests of the par­ent cor­po­ra­tion. Instead, Nolan has decided to treat Bat­man as only the best Comic Writ­ers have dared to. Adult, scary and frightening.

AICN’s Capone:

Here’s the thing you must under­stand: even if you’ve dug up every pos­si­ble trailer and clip of Heath Ledger as the great­est screen vil­lain in any super­hero movie ever, you really don’t have any idea how good his per­for­mance is in The Dark Knight. The true strength of his Joker isn’t his gal­lows humor one-liners or smart-ass quips he deliv­ers as he tears apart what is left of the fab­ric of Gotham City (look­ing more like its film­ing loca­tion of Chicago this time out than the juiced-up ver­sion in Bat­man Begins). The true strength of the final com­plete per­for­mance of Ledger’s life lies in his much longer monologues.

AICN’s Mr Beaks:

Christo­pher Nolan’s THE DARK KNIGHT is the Bat­man movie I wanted in 1989: a sav­agely down­beat epic that views Gotham City as a dis­in­te­grat­ing, crime-choked micro­cosm of the United States. It’s a film about the impos­si­bil­ity of jus­tice in Amer­i­can life and the vicious­ness to which we’ll suc­cumb in order to see another day; a cheer­less sum­mer block­buster that ulti­mately exhibits just enough faith in human­ity to keep from descend­ing into utter mis­an­thropy. It is a movie that enthralls one moment and pun­ishes the next, lash­ing the audi­ence for giv­ing in to its IMAX-abetted exhil­a­ra­tion when the abyss is beck­on­ing. It is, in other words, as hope­lessly con­flicted as its hero — and Bat­man fans shouldn’t want it any other way.

Cinematical’s Scott Weinberg:

Some­times some folks just get it right. Bryan Singer was right for X-Men, Sam Raimi was right for Spider-Man, and dear lord is Christo­pher Nolan right for Bat­man. Maybe not the campy old Bat­man that the nos­tal­gia fans know and love, but if the char­ac­ter had any clear path to fol­low after the dis­as­ter of Bat­man & Robin and the renais­sance of Frank Miller, then this is where he should be: Anchor­ing a smart, dark, dar­ing, and very intel­li­gent movie that cel­e­brates most of why we love the damn Bat in the first place: He’s hurt, he’s angry, he’s con­flicted, he’s kinda weird … aside from the money and the suit, he’s pretty much just like every­one else.

Film School Reject’s Kevin Carr:

The Dark Knight absolutely deliv­ers a riv­et­ing film with tons of action but not at the expense of plot or char­ac­ter. And it is a huge step up from Bat­man Begins.

Hol­ly­wood Chicago’s Adam Fendelman:

With only three short words com­pris­ing the film’s enig­matic title, “The Dark Knight” also boasts three epic claims to fame: the role of a life­time for the late Heath Ledger as the haunt­ingly deranged Joker, one of the best films of 2008 and one of the great­est super­hero films of all time.

Film School Reject’s Nathan Deen:

A heavy dose of Iron Man and The Incred­i­ble Hulk have made me feel bet­ter, but walk­ing out of The Dark Knight was noth­ing short of a breath of fresh air. My point is that other comic book movies just feel insignif­i­cant com­pared to this one. So finally, I think I can let go of my Spidey depres­sion and for­get about [Spider-man 3].

The ArcLight the­ater in Hol­ly­wood is cur­rently play­ing host to both the Joker cos­tumer and the new Bat suit, along­side some of the masks worn by The Joker’s hench­men — all on dis­play for pub­lic view­ing (any­one fancy head­ing down there and get­ting some high res­o­lu­tion shots?):

High Res­o­lu­tion

Pic­tures taken by bkh5858

Other Images

Pic­tures taken by Ablirien and Sketcher67

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!)