Jesus, try proofreading. These records are bullshit anyway being that they're in nominal dollars and not tied to inflation.

I haven't seen it yet but does it really have that broad appeal? I mean it is a film about Batman, which kind of narrows the field a bit. Furthermore it seems to be a bit on the dark and gritty side, which I am sure will alienate some. I'm not skeptical, just curious.

I don't have the exact figures but I think Batman Begins grossed something like $350m worldwide. So say that Dark Knight is better and more people see it because of Heath Ledger's death. I still think it will be hard to reach the gross of a film like the first Narnia, which grossed some $700m due to its universal appeal (stroke blandness). I don't mind if it does well but I thought that Batman Begins had a fairly strong focus on a young male audience and would guess that it goes perhaps even more for The Dark Knight. I think that maybe a lot of the housewives who see it in the first week would be hesitant to recommend it to their friends?

Don't forget that some theaters have actually ADDED additional showings of this movie because midnight shows had already sold out. I've heard of 3am and 6am shows being added. Most if not all theaters aren't usually open at those hours, and I'm pretty positive Mama Mia won't be airing at those times. So the statement about ticket pre-sales not having any ultimate effect on weekend sales just plain isn't true. I also do not recall hearing the same type of phenomenon with spiderman 3, which was pretty much a BAD movie, (people are saying the ticket pre-sale numbers are somewhere in the vicinity of 8x spiderman3) whereas this movie has a cult following from the past 20+ years since michael keaton and jack nicholson did it, not to mention all the comic book fans, etc. Yes, the first batman appealed to mostly young men, but heath ledger appeals to young women and his death has increased that interest immensely. I think this movie is going to blow everything else away. As for Mama Mia, Hancock, Hellboy and Journey to the Center of the Earth putting up any time of significant numbers in comparison...maybe last weekend...or next weekend...not this one.

I remains to be seen if Heath Ledger appeals to young women in the guise of the Joker ;) It's always fun to speculate about things so I just think that there is a possibility of a backlash to the hype because of the not so general appeal of the movie. I mean, Ledger was brilliant and good looking in The Order but people hated that. Kingdom of Heaven suffered a backlash because it was too demanding on the young fans who came to see Orlando Bloom. But soon enough we will see.

I say this only from personal experience. Young women I work with, associate with, communicate with and am personal friends with have all expressed an interest in "Heath Ledger" more so than the actual movie. Some of these saw and enjoyed Batman Begins, but many did not. As you said, there is no real way to know how much of an appeal that will hold and how much actual impact it will have on sales, but the theaters that aired screenings every half hour starting at midnight last night because the shows were selling out so fast, well, they speak volumes.

I understand the capacity of a theater...I'm not a fool. My point was, advance ticket sales DO make a difference, because those midnight screenings would never have happened if the tickets didn't sell out beforehand. You dismissed them as meaningless for the reason that you mentioned-number of seats. I stated that they did in fact have meaning, in that they didn't cause the theaters to add seats, but to add showings. THAT made a huge impact on the box office sales...nearly 19 million on the first night I believe, topping the previous record for that which was one of the newer star wars movies. And yes, the Spider man movies far outgrossed the previous batman movies. With the exception of the first two batman movies, the tim burton ones, the other batman movies were absolutely horrendous. In terms of budget, none of the previous batman movies had any comparison to spiderman. But the point really isn't about any prior batman movies. The fact is, this movie is on a bigger scale than any of those. On par perhaps with the spider man movies in terms of special effects, stunts, etc, but in terms of quality of acting and overall quality of the movie, there is no comparison. I saw spiderman 1 and 2. The first was decent, the second movie was so bad I couldn't even bring myself to see the 3rd, and pretty much ignored it's opening. I was very impressed with Batman Begins, although I didn't see it in the theaters, and was waiting nearly a year for The Dark Knight. The Dark Knight was by far better than any previous batman movie, and every other movie of its genre fairly pales in comparison in terms of quality, unless you include Sin City, and some people will definitely disagree with me on that.

If we're going to talk pure numbers here, add $160+ million or so that the dark knight has done in the last 4 days to that 600 million figure, account for everyone waiting for the hype to die down as you predict, and I'd say this movie alone will make up for the deficiencies of the previous movies. Not to mention the movie itself is actually amazingly good.

I must admit though, your estimates were fairly on point. add a bit to the dark knight and mama mia, and take a bit from hancock and hellboy and you were right there.