'Dark Knight' Adds Opening Day Screenings at 6am

You know it's a good sign for your opening weekend when... The New York Times is reporting that The Dark Knight, which like a lot of blockbusters will have midnight screenings on July 18th, will have additional early screenings at not just 3am but also 6am because of the overwhelming demand. It's not just in major metropolitan areas, either; The Times says towns like Eagan, Minnesota will also have 6am Dark Knight showings to accommodate the hordes of people anxious to see the most talked about movie of the year. “In the public mind, opening weekends have been eventized,” said Dark Knight executive producer Thomas Tull. And that's of course, very true. For several reasons, the opening weekend is vitally important to both the film and the studio(s) it represents. To begin with, an opening weekend generally accounts for 30% or more of a blockbuster's overall domestic take. Look at Iron Man: Just over $300 million total, just over $100 million in the first three days. Indiana Jones also eclipsed $100 million and it just hit $300 million, as well. Conversely, if a movie does poorly on its opening weekend, it will have trouble reaching that 30% number. Take Speed Racer: $18 million in the first weekend, $24 million since. Prince Caspian: $55 million on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and another $80 million in the last 55 days or so. Opening weekends influence decision-making for future ticket sales, so by cramming The Dark Knight into theaters at the wholly unreasonable hour of 6am, Warner Bros. will have even more monstrous numbers to crow about come July 21st. That should translate to a bigger second weekend, which will obviously raise the total box office numbers. Another reason opening weekends are big is for the marketing. If a movie like Dark Knight comes in a little soft - not a worry in this case - studios can and do alter their marketing. Sometimes they go aggressive, which is why you hear the number four movie of a weekend called "The number one female action comedy in the country" or some such nonsense, and other times, they scale back their ad campaigns, either because the movie is self-sustaining and the studio can appropriate that money to another title down the road or because they're abandoning ship. Either way, the first three days are crucial. Where The Dark Knight is concerned, it seems like the hottest ticket in years. I would say that it's the most anticipated movie since the last Star Wars. It's advance ticket sales have dwarfed those for Spider-Man 3, the former record holder. There aren't lines like at Revenge of the Sith, at least not yet, but we could be headed for a $120 - $140 million opening weekend, if not more. The extra shows will also help because The Dark Knight is over 150 minutes long; it won't be able to play as often as, say, the 90-minute Meet Dave, so any opportunity to increase the number of chances people have to see the film are valuable. So the question becomes: Can The Dark Knight set a new box office record for opening weekends? Tough to say. Spider-Man 3 did make $151 million. Consider that number for a little bit. That's 50% more than Iron Man, 50% more than Indiana Jones, give or take. It's $16 million more than the second place film, Pirates 2, which itself is $12 million more than the last Star Wars. $151 million is also 75% of the total U.S. gross for Batman Begins, and while everyone expects the sequel to do a lot better, the numbers we're looking at kind of bend your mind a little bit.

Comments

[Adam T]

Great article. This really puts the box-office numbers in perpective, and even though I think TDK will break Spider-Man 3's record, it's important to understand what it would take for that to happen. Good comments on marketing, studio reaction, and everything all around. Thanks for you insight.

-Adam

[Will]

Three years ago we were asked if we were ready to begin. We were, and let's hope it doesn't end...

[Will]

Oh, and I'd go see Kitt Kittredge for the third time before I ever went to Meet Dave... Any News on the Pluto Nash 2 front?

[Carv]

I couldn't help noticing Colin's still stoked about the movie four days after he saw it.