It looks like the original numbers for "The Dark Knight" are even higher than originally reported, as they have come in at around $64 to $65 million for the North American box office. That includes the $18.5 million take from the midnight-to-3 a.m. shows.
The midnight showing was decent, but when you take into account Star Wars Episode III: Revenge Of The Sith launched at 2,915 venues, in contrast to the 3,040 (for the midnight showing), it's not quite as impressive as it looks at first. Even so, it's good numbers, and should be a record that holds. The Dark Knight finished with $18.5 million in contrast to Star Wars' $16.9 million for that time period.
For The Dark Knight, Saturday should tell the story on whether it will have a chance at breaking the weekend box office record held by Spider-Man 3, which stands at $151 million. If the show is frontloaded on Friday, it'll probably drop tremendously and fall short of the Spider-Man numbers. It's really hard to tell which way it'll go.
Either way, it'll end up being a blockbuster, and Warner Bros. will be thrilled with the results.
One thing that may hold it back is a number of people commenting that it's not something they would bring their young children to, so that may hold back the number over the next couple days.
The film opened at a record 4,366 theaters, which will probably keep it from breaking any average-per-venue numbers.
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