'The Dark Knight' Obliterates Opening Day Record

If things continue this way, we might have that new opening weekend box office record after all. With $66 million on Friday - a brand new high - The Dark Knight is poised to make at least $140 million this weekend, if not closer to $160 million. The new opening day record beat last year's Spider-Man 3 by nearly $7 million. These estimates come to us from Box Office Mojo. A couple of things about projecting the rest of the weekend: It's going to be hard to accurately gauge where this film might wind up because of all the midnight, 3am, and 6am shows. According to various reports, the overnight screenings contributed $17 million and change to The Dark Knight's take, but since those showings aren't available on Saturday and Sunday (at least not industry wide), you can make the assumption that The Dark Knight probably won't make another $60 million on Saturday. That's speculation, of course; Saturday could make up some of that difference because of more screenings and availability for people who had to work on Friday to see it, but I still can't see it hitting that high a number. Spider-Man 3 lost 14% of its audience from Friday to Saturday, and Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest and Revenge of the Sith both dropped off significantly over the rest of their debuts. Sith, in fact, barely doubled its Friday sales on Saturday and Sunday combined. So that's what happens when you look at history. Is a 14% drop about right? I'd say it could be a little more because, again, you're taking away thousands upon thousands of tickets that those other monster hits didn't even have to deal with when you remove 3am screenings. I'd say it'll have a 17% drop on Saturday, and then the fairly standard 15% drop on Sunday.  That would be a $54.8 million Saturday, and $46.6 million on Sunday. Your mileage may vary. The result would be a hulking $167 million (!) if those numbers hold up. Again, it's really hard to predict Saturday because so much of that business was instant impact. Saturday could mirror Friday pretty closely, or it could lose a quarter of the crowd, but I think we're being smart about our pick. And looking back to Thursday, we said $165 million would be about as much as it could make. I'd be shocked if it zoomed past $175 million, and equally bowled over if this somehow didn't hit $140 million. As for the rest of the field, well Mamma Mia! did OK, with almost $10 million on Friday. Hancock should win third this weekend, and Hellboy II and Journey to the Center of the Earth will battle for fifth place. The new release Space Chimps is putting up Meet Dave numbers so far, and that's not a good sign; it could finish the weekend at about $8 million.