showbiz

'Dark Knight' shatters box office records

Posted on Friday, Aug. 22, 2008
by Cineplex Entertainment

Dark Knight

In the ultimate superhero box office battle that pitted The Dark Knight against Spider-Man 3, the Caped Crusader soared to the top, setting a record for best-ever weekend opening with sales over US$158 million, reports 'Variety'.

Bolstered by its first-day opening record of $66.4 million (all figures US), heaps of advance buzz and rampant word-of-mouth about Batman's joust with the Joker, keen moviegoers flocked to the theatres, propelling The Dark Knight past Spidey's May 2007 haul of $151.1 million.

Sitting pretty behind robot flick WALL-E as the second best reviewed film of 2008 so far, with a 94% rating on 'Rotten Tomatoes' tomatometer, critics universally agreed that Christopher Nolan's second Batman saga was a darker, more meditative look at the forces of good and evil in a morally ambiguous world, filled with stunning visuals and star turns by lead Christian Bale and the dearly departed Heath Ledger.

Even with a run-time that ticked well past the two hour mark and exploring rather melancholy themes for summer movie fare, Nolan's Dark Knight shone much brighter than his 2005 origin of Batman tale, Batman Begins, which made a relatively paltry $48.7 million on its opening weekend.

Gotham City's finest also broke IMAX records, thanks to six IMAX-lenses sequences in the film which brought more attention to the super-sized screen option, grossing $6.2 million in sales for the first weekend, outdoing the previous precedent of $4.7 million set by Spider-Man 3.

Coming in as the number two box office draw was Mamma Mia!, the Meryl Streep-led musical that follows a young girl trying to discover who her father is before she gets married, set to ABBA's polished Euro-pop soundtrack and standing in stark contrast to the sombre tone of The Dark Knight.

Will Smith's Hancock and the adventure-fantasy romp Journey to the Center of the Earth round out the top-grossing films for this weekend's North American box office.

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