Joker Robs Banks, ‘Dark Knight’ Takes it Back
Though I make a point of not talking about box office totals, it’s kind of impossible to avoid talking about what’s going on with The Dark Knight this weekend. In this case, the numbers are interesting for a few reasons and they also allow me to continue procrastinating my review.
For one thing, the totals are historic. With sold-out midnight shows all around the country, the film made $18.4 million before some of you went to bed on Thursday night. In just 2 ½ hours it had made enough to put it at #58 on the yearly box office chart. By the end of the day it had pulled in $66 million, a single-day record (beating Spider-Man 3’s $59.8 million) and good enough to land it at #22 for the year.
Projections at this point are for it to clear $157 million [revised to 155.3 on Sunday] by the time the Watercooler goes up Monday morning, a 3-day opening weekend record (topping SM3’s $151.1 million) placing it at #6 for the year and counting.
History aside, I’m left to wonder why this movie is so much more financially successful than Batman Begins which ended its run at $205.3 million in 2005. Ordinarily, superhero sequels tend to make less with each installment. Spider-Man and X-Men are two recent examples and no Batman film has ever made as much as the first one’s $251 million. Until now.
To say that it’s a better movie (it is) isn’t good enough. Opening weekends have little to do with the quality of a movie and more to do with how effectively the studio sells the movie. Did the viral campaign really drum up that much excitement? Is it because of the additional factor of Heath Ledger’s untimely death?
More than anything, I think the unpaid media hype over The Dark Knight turning out to be the Biggest Thing Ever become a self-fulfilling prophecy. All week we were treated to news about shows selling out online, information David Poland questioned even to the point of suggesting Fandango and Moviefone were feeding the Hollywood media (i.e. Nikki Finke) false information to encourage people to use their service.
As we speak I’m sure Poland is crafting some spin to soften the blow of Nikki being right, but whether or not online ticket sellouts were exaggerated, perhaps the news touched off a chain reaction of increasing intensity. I can picture people convincing themselves to see the movie as soon as they could get tickets because it seemed like the thing everyone was going to be talking about when normally they’d wait until the crowds died down. Anecdotally, I got text messages Friday evening from two different sets of people who rarely see a movie like this on opening night.
The next question is how much the box office will fall off in the coming weeks now that everyone who wants to see the movie has seen it. In order for it to hold up, lots of people who have already seen it are going to have to keep seeing it like they did with Titanic and with the Star Wars movies. Ordinarily, superhero movies inspire just that kind of behavior, but The Dark Knight is not an ordinary superhero movie. It’s not like a roller coaster where you get off and immediately get back in line for another ride. It’s a dark, difficult and challenging film that doesn’t deliver the jolt of “fun” that would inspire average people to get addicted to it.
The audience I saw it with at the packed Cinerama Dome on Friday night enjoyed it, but there were few moments of spontaneous cheering or applause. When it was all over, they seemed almost subdued. I don’t think it’s a reflection on the quality of the film, but a reaction to it not being the disposable summer fun many people expect from the genre.
My take? Unless I’m reading the movie and people wrong (likely on both counts), I’m not convinced The Dark Knight will end up the #1 film of the year at the box office.
Filed under: Box Office, News
Tags: The Dark Knight
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http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=10817
hmm as of now your number one film for the year is iron man. with something like $315 million or whatever going into the weekend. and the recent indy j. has like $311/312 million…
so is anything coming out in post summer that’s gonna beat those numbers ?? hmm very likley no…
and with both of those films box office stateside runs being over and batman seemingly gonna go over $150 million for this weekend. hey i say it odds of being number one for year are pretty good.
is there some big dec release/that’s gonna slay prophet/money wise ???
hmm what was spidey 3’s second weekend $62 million ?????
and it seems dark knight is liked alot more than spidey 3. so it’s second week fall off should hit that level of uh hitting the wall.
and last night i saw an example of someone just missing getting a seat for a 9:45 pm showing because some kid beat them with an on line order by a minute or two. it’s now sold out. ouch…
viva the internet. ha ha…
Craig, you’re right. The box office bonanza of this weekend has little to do with the quality of the film. Only in a week or so can we begin judging its box office on the basis of word-of-mouth, and just how good the film is.
It’s the perfect storm of the hype, the Ledger and the moment. It’s the opposite of Batman Begins, which crawled to get just past 200 million because it was after an eight-year dormant period for the franchise after the disastrous Schumaker reign of terror: after approximately a year and a half of people checking out Batman Begins on DVD, and being impressed, and being interested in a sequel, the hype for this film began out of Chicago itself when filming for The Dark Knight was just commencing.
The viral marketing has been insane. It feels like there have been a dozen different trailers, and as Hedwig noted in the Weekend Forecast thread, 1,001 posters. The iconic imagery of Ledger’s feral The Joker–from the first major trailer back in December, the Why So Serious? marketing campaign, etc.–was a big part of all of this. Rumors swirl about Ledger’s performance being brilliant–these rumors evidently being first spread out of the very cast and crew working on the film roughly a year ago. In the trailer alone, Ledger looks tremendous. Fanboys who love Batman and are in that exalted marketing block (18-35, 18-50, etc. males, in other words) are salivating. This is the Batman saga they’ve always wanted–dark, gritty, complex, challenging. Nolan says Heat is a major inspiration for the film. Many fanboys love crime dramas. They dig Michael Mann. They love Heat. They love watching Scorsese gangster pictures.
Then, in January, Ledger dies. And all of the mainstream press reports and then entertainment pieces about him begin to serve as “free marketing” for the film. Now the film joins 1956’s Giant as an already enormously anticipated film whose young bright, promising star died between the time of the film’s production and its release.
My crowd in San Francisco was primarily in my age group (I’m 23). It skewed male, but there were a lot of females, too. With only a couple of exceptions, it seemed like almost the entire crowd was 18-40 or so. These type of guys, particularly, are going to eat this film like ice cream, and they’re going to want to see it again, and it’s because of them that the film will probably have legs that can counteract the fact that it’s too dark and “adult,” as it were for “kids,” and that many women who’ve seen it want to now check out something a little more to their natural liking next time they go to the theatre.
At a certain point, a film becomes so astonishingly hyped up that it, as you say, “becomes the Biggest Thing Ever.”
Interesting analysis, Craig.
In retrospect, it’s going to be hard for this movie not to be the #1 film of the year. Spider-Man 3 cleared 336 million and it was pretty unpopular.
Iron Man and Indy aren’t going to make much more and there’s nothing coming that will beat them.
So Alexander, do you think Batman Begins just kind of cleared the way for this one? Letting everyone know it was safe to go back into the bat waters?
It just seems strange to me that more people would see this one than the last one. Who are the people that skipped the last one altogether but really wanted to see this one?
Maybe they caught up to the other one on DVD.
The funny part to me was Poland’s week’s worth of naysaying. He wouldn’t even come out and say what he thought it was going to make, but he was quick to shoot down all the news about it possibly being huge.
Poland trying to shoot down the “hugeness” of The Dark Knight is funny as hell. That was probably the final coup de grace in its favor for box office treasure.
I do think Batman Begins definitely cleared the way for The Dark Knight. Begins was fighting the good fight; the status of Batman as a movie franchise was in the doldrums going into that one, and because it was so strong and markedly different from all other cinematic interpretations, it truly whetted everyone’s appetites for a sequel.
Begins only made 205 million domestically. I’m not sure what it did on DVD, but from I’ve read, it’s there that it became something of a juggernaut (205 million isn’t anything to sneeze at, really, but it’s sort of around the bottom of the Batman barrel in terms of box office, or at least was perceived to be).
Also… I remember when Begins came out, and I swear I don’t think I saw a trailer for it and the hype was so, so very quiet.
And then throw in the fact that it was between the last Star Wars film, the tabloid-stirring Mr. and Mrs. Smith and the much anticipated War of the Worlds, and poor old Batman was fighting for his life in ‘05. How quickly things change. It only takes one film, apparently.
(In this way, too, The Dark Knight’s release date is more advantageous. July 18th is kind of “late,” but it’s going to steamroll for two weeks, guaranteed. X-Files is late, and Mummy 3, despite the great success of the two Mummy movies, is several years late. Then you’ve got a bunch of comedies and yet another incarnation of Star Wars–and there were a bunch of little kids at the Metreon yesterday excitedly explaining to one another the backstories of the characters in Clone Wars’ poster, so I sense we’re all underestimating it just a bit, even if I personally have zero interest in it.)
Clearly the monkeys are so spazzed out by Space Chimps they have let their guard down — or else run out of poop to throw at any box office talk. Fully expected to get tasered when I brought up the Friday record-breaker this morning, but now I see they’re acting on instructions from Fearless Leader.
Having just returned from second dose of TDK this afternoon, am happy to report repeat viewings are well-rewarded. The film almost demands multiple rides and its visually rich buffet tempts us to come back for seconds.
Here’s where I copy and paste a comment from AD because I’m hungry and lazy and don’t feel like rephrasing what I just wrote over there:
For me, a second viewing of The Dark Knight expands the film’s impact and solidifies its strengths. Nuances in Heath Ledger’s performance that I missed in the swirling tsunami the first time around bloom like petals spreading in the calm of a second appraisal. Every gesture, every tic, every twist and flinch. There needs to be a dictionary cataloging the range of his body language.
Also realized in conversations with friends later how little TDK fatigue we feel. Amazing, considering how the buzz has been brimming for weeks. One of the most skillful marketing jobs I’ve ever seen. Somehow managing to saturate to every corner of my consciousness with ever being oppressive or aggravating.
Funny observation I saw on another message board. Some guy had gone to IMDb to watch the TDK trailer again, and the sponsored video starts up — and kicks off with an ad for The Dark Knight! This TDK trailer is brought to you by TDK. ha!
Oh, and speaking of IMDb… guess which gangster epic just got knocked out of the #1 slot on the Top 250.
Senator Pat Geary: [as they're watching the performer at the sex club] Freddie, that thing can’t be real.
Fredo Corleone: Sure it is. That’s why they call him the Bat-man.
How can any monkey run out of poop?
It’s all about Batman Begins. People liked Spider-Man 1 enough to make Spider-Man 2 open bigger, then they liked that even more to make Spidey 3 open even bigger, even if WOM wasn’t good enough to allow it to gross as much as it could have if it was better - and the inevitable Spidey 4 will have a much smaller opening weekend as a result. So now we have people who liked Batman Begins pouring into theaters for the new one.
I’m in line at the Metreon right now. Got here two and a half hours early and am still nowhere near the front. That’s the ticket-holders line, mind you.
Yeah, it’s big. Who knew Dave Poland could be wrong?
Fortunately, I brought a cushion to sit on, mobile internet access and Cormac McCarthy. He’s heavy, smells like Ben Gay and doesn’t use punctuation when he speaks.
Wow, Frank, I came exactly two and a half hours early from the IMAX 1:30 showing at the Metreon and was the fifth person, and watched the line grow and grow. Have fun.
McCarthy’s lack of punctuation used to annoy me but I’ve recently come to accept it.
I feel like no one thought Begins was really to going to work, from the lack of a recognizable Bat-villain in the marketing to the fact that most Americans just didn’t have a lot of faith in Christopher Nolan or Christian Bale, it didn’t really draw a crowd.
Mind you, these are the same idiots who re-elected a fucking chimpanzee to be their supreme leader, so there’s no counting for taste.
Regardless, they’ve all drunk the cool-aid. This sucker will have some serious legs. I will see it at least once more in a theater and I usually reserve that for only a couple movies a year. I’m also putting the word out to everyone I know to go see this bad boy in a theater, pronto. I want Nolan to get all the recognition he deserves.
Just listening to political talk radio, sports talk, etc., over the past two days, I’ve been amazed at how much talk there is of Batman. Just heard an hour of it on Coast to Coast. All highly positive. This thing is gonna have legs.
http://www.boxofficeprophets.com/column/index.cfm?columnID=10818
Whoah, crazy drunk, tired joel had a go at the blue states last night. Sorry for that, my blue bethren. We try to keep him locked in the crawl space, but every once in a while security around the compound gets a little lax.
re: “The audience I saw it with at the packed Cinerama Dome on Friday night enjoyed it, but there were few moments of spontaneous cheering or applause.”
Although my general demeanor in theaters is similar to wallpaper, I actually wanted to applaud at one point — (the moment when we find out who’s driving the paddy wagon) — but it just felt completely out of step with the mood of the film and the audience.
people only mention the audience reaction or even mention other people are in the audience when the film is the dark knight ??? hmm…
What other people in other audiences, glimmer? Everybody is at The Dark Night.
Where’s our Craig? We want us some Sunday Craig!
(I think he’s having laptop issues,)
I have a feeling that we will all soon see the long-awaited THE DARK KNIGHT review from Craig. I bet this will be one will be one of his most perceptive pieces, Ryan.
Sunday Craig has thrown up his arms in surrender and thrown up the bat-review. He’s stepping away from his computer….to go see movies probably…while ya’ll pick it apart.
Enjoy.
sunday craig…it’s what’s for dinner… ;)
and thanks for clearing that up/ryan.i’m so often confused and lost. ha ha…. :)