HOLLYWOOD — It smashed the weekend box-office records. But a closer look at “The Dark Knight’s” performance suggests that the Batman sequel is poised to be the summer’s — if not the year’s — highest-grossing release.
While the final theatrical take for “The Dark Knight” won’t be known for many weeks, insight into the sequel’s ultimate appeal emerged as early as last wekeend, when rival studios disagreed over how much weekend business the film was doing.
Attendance at almost all movies drops sharply from Saturday to Sunday, and studios typically predict a movie’s Sunday — and thus total weekend — gross by assuming the film will generate from 75 percent to 85 percent of its Saturday sales on Sunday (because weekend box-office estimates are issued on Sunday morning, they necessarily are based on such projections).
“The Dark Knight” pulled in $67.2 million Friday and grossed about $48 million on Saturday. Distributor Warner Bros. estimated it would fall about 18 percent on Sunday, giving it a total weekend haul of $155.3 million. Other studios on Sunday morning, however, reckoned “The Dark Knight” would sink more than 20 percent from Saturday to Sunday, meaning that the Batman sequel would narrowly — if at all — break the all-time weekend record of $151.1 million held by 2007’s “Spider-Man 3.”
By Monday morning, though, moviegoers proved everybody wrong: “The Dark Knight” didn’t fall 20 percent. It didn’t fall 15 percent. It didn’t even fall 10 percent. It slipped around 9 percent, a figure rival distributors said Monday was unheard-of.
Such steadfast audience interest not only gave “The Dark Knight” an even greater opening weekend record — more than $158 million — but also proved the movie has enough positive word of mouth to become the summer’s highest-grossing film.
“I think that’s not going to be a difficult task,” Warner Bros. domestic distribution chief Dan Fellman said of “The Dark Knight’s” prospects to eclipse both “Iron Man” ($314.4 million to date) and “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” ($312.6 million to date). “I think we’re going to be way up there.”
But how high? Some rival studios said Monday that they are confident “The Dark Knight” could gross more than $400 million by the time all tickets are counted. The highest-grossing film of all time is 1997’s “Titanic,” with ticket sales of $600.8 million. But only six other films have grossed more than $400 million domestically, a list that includes the original “Spider-Man” and “E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial.”
A look at “The Dark Knight’s” Sunday sales — a record of $43.6 million for the day — suggests that family, adult and ethnic interest in the film is unusually high, as the end of the weekend tends to be an especially good moviegoing day for those demographics.
