Great domestic midnight opening
THURSDAY 6 PM, 3RD UPDATE: A Warner Bros executive just told me, The Dark Knight Rises is tearing up the box office at midnight. It should passMarvel’s The Avengers‘ $18.7M as the largest superhero midnight show of all time.” And remember: Avengers also holds the domestic record for the largest opening weekend gross. Warner Bros. Pictures’ and Legendary Pictures’ mega-movie has 2,500 sold-out showtimes on Fandango, and today is trending to be one of that big online ticket vendor’s top-selling Thursdays in the company’s 12–year history. Most interesting is that Chris Nolan’s Batman trilogy finale is outpacing the early summer blockbuster Marvel’s The Avengers in ticket sales at the same point in Fandango’s sales cycle. “Today’s ticket sales are relentless, just like the action in the movie,” a Fandango executive just told me. Disney began releasing Avengers in Digital 3D, RealD and IMAX 3D after midnight into about 2,500 locations around the U.S. and Canada, and some theaters kept playing it around the clock into the wee hours. Whether The Dark Knight Rises will screen 24/7 on Friday will depend on how many theaters can convince staff to work overtime. This actioner opens in a whopping 3,700 midnight domestic locations. Like the big theater chain did with Avengers, AMC will be hosting a special showings in IMAX and 2D – the entire Batman trilogy beginning at 6 PM for $40/$25 complete with commorative poster and special lanyard. At its widest release,The Dark Knight Rises will debut in 4,404 domestic theaters from Friday through Sunday, including 332 IMAX locations. MORE LATER
Great opening in Australia but well under Avengers
2ND UPDATE: Warner Bros. Pictures’ andLegendary Pictures‘ The Dark Knight Rises rode into Australia’s cinemas and IMAX, grossing in excess of AUD$3.5M in its first day on screens, making it the #1 movie in the country. As good as Chris Nolan’s Batpic finale’s opening day is, it was well below Marvel’s The Avengers, which smashed the Australian box office on its opening day of release with a record breaking AUD$6M (USD$6.2M). (It was the #2 all-time opening behindHarry Potter And The Deathly Hallows Part 2 (AUD$7M).) Chris Nolan’s Batman finale was released Down Under on Thursday to mostly rave reviews by the local film critics. This was its first foreign rollout.
Warner Bros this coming weekend is releasing The Dark Knight Rises into only 17 international markets, representing 6,300 screens. These include 4 of the Top Ten movie markets: UK, Spain, Australia, and Korea. The Dark Knight Rises already has taken £1 million in advance booking at BFI IMAX, breaking all previous sales records.
The studio will open another 40 markets over the second weekend and include all major markets with the exception of Italy (August) and China where The China Film Group, which sets release dates for U.S. films, wants to pit The Dark Knight Rises against Sony’s The Amazing Spider-Man on August 30th. “That August date is not written in stone, and we are in talks with China Film to find a date that works for everybody,” a Warner Bros exec tells Deadline. “Warner Bros would never not release the film in China.” In total overseas, the film is projected to show on approximately 20,000 foreign screens.
Log in to comment