Same Bat Time? Not Quite

Movie theaters are adding 6 a.m. opening-day showings of The Dark Knight to meet demand created by sold-out midnight and 3 a.m. screenings.

"It's normal for movies like to this start at midnight," says Chad Hartigan, a box office analyst for Exhibitor Relations Co.

But 6 a.m. screenings?

"That's not normal," Hartigan says.

There are no hard numbers for how many theaters will stay open as the witching hour turns to the rise-and-shine hour at 6 a.m. on July 18, when The Dark Knight debuts. Overall, Hartigan says he expects the movie to play at 3,800-3,900 theaters during its opening weekend.

According to Ted Hong, vice president of marketing for the online ticket service Fandango, the unusual 6 a.m. show times are indicators of unusually strong interest.

"The Dark Knight is our fastest selling film in wide release this year," Hong says. "It trumps Iron Man, Sex and the City, Indiana Jones [and] WALL-E at the same point in their sales cycles—and it's even outpacing last year's Spider-Man 3 and Pirates [of the Caribbean: At World's End]."

Per Fandango, The Dark Knight will bow dark and extremely early in midnight showings on more than 1,500 screens. (Fandango and E! Online are both owned by Comcast.)

The service says "many" of those 12 a.m. screenings are sold out in cities both expected (New York, the model for Batman's troubled Gotham City) and not (Boise, Idaho; Council Bluffs, Iowa; etc.). MovieTickets.com, another online ticketing service, reported a total of 140 Dark Knight sell-outs as of today.

In a summer led by the $311 million-grossing Iron Man, The Dark Knight has been regarded as the blockbuster to beat. A sequel to Christopher Nolan's hit franchise reboot, Batman Begins, the new movie is receiving ecstatic early reviews—Variety called it "enthralling"—and Oscar buzz for the late Heath Ledger for his performance as the seriously unhinged Joker.

As early as two weeks ago, three weeks before the July 18 debut, Fandango was reporting "dozens" of premiere-night sell-outs. As of 10 a.m. this morning, still a good eight days before B-Day, The Dark Knight was accounting for 51 percent of all tickets sold by the service. At MovieTickets.com, the film was doing more business than six of that company's Top 10 all-time hits, including The Passion of the Christ and the second Star Wars prequel, Attack of the Clones.

Says Hong: "All indicators point to [next Thursday] as a very busy night at theaters across the country."

thats my plan as well

The Dark Knight

(Four out of Five Stars)

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Although I enjoy the occasional guilty pleasure type of action flick in the theater for the typical reasons (explosions and cool effects), for the most part, I am not into ”action” films and even if I find a bit of enjoyment in one, it is VERY atypical that I consider it a good film… I mean there is entertainment and then there is art and, in the best scenario, they both blend…. It is my opinion that The Dark Knight provides just such a scenario. This movie has elongated action sequences that are very well done, stunning artistic direction and some sweeping runs filmed for IMAX that were unlike anything I had experienced in the theater… but, on top of that, the story remained mysterious and smart and the acting was above average, not just for the action genre, but in general. Maggie Gyllenhaal is swelteringly attractive and astutely distinguished as Rachel Dawes, and Christian Bale is, after all, a master at the dexterity of acting and is therefore able to bring the anti-hero everyman realism to the role of Batman that is needed to set this aside from the average comic book flick. Aaron Eckhart is solid and better than usual and, of course, in case you haven’t noticed Gary Oldman is one of the great actors of his era. However, Heath Ledger literally steals this movie. He is deranged and inspired as The Joker. There are subtleties to his work in this film that are nonexistent in most movies and almost universally absent from all action films. I realize that some more cynical moviegoers (and I usually fall into that category) might argue that now that he has died everyone is blowing his performance out of proportion. It is true that this often happens. Nevertheless, Ledger pulls something off in The Dark Knight that is nothing short of tremendous there are moments when he is so lost in the role that it is literally scary. This is an entertaining work and a rare occasion in which a blockbuster actually has something new to offer. A fine film!