Dark Knight breaks records — but why?
July 21, 2008 at 10:19 am by Curt Holman in A&E
Batman soared more like Superman over the weekend when The Dark Knight earned an estimated $155.4 million. The sequel to Batman Begins broke most of the records that can be broken, including biggest opening weekend and, according to The Vulture:
the records for biggest single-day gross ($67 million on Saturday), largest number of opening theaters (4,366 nationally), biggest midnight gross ($18.5 million on Thursday night), best-ever July opening (beating Pirates of the Caribbean 2’s measly $136 million in 2006).
Final numbers will be in later today, so it’s possible Spider-man 3’s previous record could stand. It’s likely that Spider-man 3 sold more total tickets, with the higher ticket prices giving The Dark Knight the edge.
Apparently nobody saw it coming, either. The Dark Knight was generally expected to break $100 million (like Iron Man or better), but not to have one of the most successful weekends in film history. Most hugely successful movies tend to be brighter, flashier and more fun, and The Dark Knight was accurately perceived as being dark to point of despair, as the above image from someecards suggests.
The Dark Knight seems to have enjoyed one of those Perfect Storms of hype and publicity. Most of the interest doubtless surrounded the late Heath Ledger playing the famous role of The Joker. Warner Brothers had launched on-line viral campaigns months ago, and I know someone who went on an actual scavenger hunt around Atlanta to find some kind of loosely-related clue about the movie. Instead of flooding the market, this summer’s preponderance of superhero films seems to have primed the pump for The Dark Knight.
I’m going to suggest that buzz from critics put public interest over the top. When the early reviews proved so positive (if not unanimously so), throwing around comparisons to The Godfather Part II or Michael Mann’s Heat, word-of-mouth interest seemed to hit a tipping point. Non-movie geeks were clearly a lot more curious and excited about The Dark Knight than Spider-man 3 or other recent summer mega-hits from big franchise films, which you sometimes see out of a feeling of obligation more than true enthusiasm. Hopefully studios will follow the lesson of Iron Man and The Dark Knight: that good actors, good directors and good scripts can actually yield good superhero movies.
The Dark Knight will probably have a steep second-weekend drop-off, but I predict it’ll still crush The X-Files: I Want to Believe (which I haven’t yet seen), which opens Friday.
July 21st, 2008 at 12:50 pm
It was also apparently the biggest weekend for movie-going in history.
http://www.the-numbers.com/interactive/newsStory.php?newsID=3566
It’s a fine example of recession-related escapism.
And The Dark Knight is a dern good movie.
July 21st, 2008 at 2:51 pm
The marketing and good reviews helped. But the tragic Heath Ledger story line is what put Dark Knight over the top.