He was pretty good too as Mr. Zorg in The Fifth Element.
Posted on 07/20/2008 3:15:21 PM PDT by Borges
Holy blockbuster, Batman! The Dark Knight grossed a behemoth $155.3 million from Friday through Sunday, according to early estimates, to score the biggest three-day opening in box-office history, while leading the way on a weekend for the record books.
The second Batman movie from star Christian Bale and director Christopher Nolan finished at No. 1 (as anticipated, duh!), and, assuming the early estimates hold, it set new standards in just about every category imaginable. It scored the biggest three-day opening weekend of all time (beating Spider-Man 3's $151.1 mil bow). It achieved the best opening day and single day in history ($66.4 mil, shattering Spider-Man 3's mark of $59.8 mil). It brought in the most money from Friday midnight shows of any release ever ($18.5 mil, passing Star Wars: Episode III — Revenge of the Sith's $16.9 mil). It banked a record $6.2 mil from 94 IMAX venues over the weekend (Spider-Man 3 had the old record, $4.7 mil). And it did it all with the biggest theater count, 4,366 locations, of all time.
Oh, but for Bale, Nolan, costars Maggie Gyllenhaal and the late Heath Ledger, Warner Bros., DC Comics, and everybody else involved (all of whom scored career-best bows, naturally), things get even better. The Dark Knight is already more than three-quarters of the way to passing the $205.3 mil that 2005's Batman Begins earned during its entire domestic run. This followup film also drew raves from ticket buyers, scoring a solid A CinemaScore review from a crowd that skewed slightly male and older. And if you add that to the critical coos that The Dark Knight had already been earning, as well as the fact that it's really the last mega-blockbuster movie to hit the multiplex this summer, the film should continue its remarkable run for weeks to come.
As it happened, The Dark Knight wasn't the only record breaker at the box office this weekend. By coming in at No. 2 with $27.6 mil, Mamma Mia! set a new mark for the biggest premiere ever for a movie musical, if that early estimate holds (Hairspray banked $27.5 mil on its first weekend a year ago). That total also passes the $27.5 mil that star Meryl Streep's The Devil Wears Prada earned in its debut two summers back, and it can be credited to the same crowd: older women. Yep, a whopping three-quarters of the film's audience was ladies, and 64 percent was over the age of 30. But they loved Mamma Mia!, and along with the few fellas who also came to see Pierce Brosnan in the Broadway adaptation, they gave it a nice A- CinemaScore grade.
Mamma Mia! and The Dark Knight accounted for nearly 75 percent of all box-office revenue this weekend, so there was little money to go around for the rest of the movies in release. Hancock (No. 3) fell 56 percent to bank $14 mil. Journey to the Center of the Earth (No. 4) dropped an expected 43 percent to earn $11.9 mil. Hellboy II: The Golden Army fell a colossal 71 percent to earn just $10 mil, after bowing at No. 1 last time around. (That ranks among the 40 worst second-weekend declines in history, ouch!) And newcomer Space Chimps (No. 7) failed to take off, with a mere $7.4 mil.
The success stories continued in America's art houses where the Sundance thriller Transsiberian averaged a sweet $17,608 in two venues.
Overall, the cumulative box office set yet another record: The weekend's $253 mil total domestic gross was the biggest three-day sum in history (smashing the mark of $218 mil, from the first frame of July 2006, when Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest led the way). Needless to say, the box office was up an eye-popping 64 percent from a year ago. And, needless to say, with Batman protecting them even more than before, everyone in Hollywood will sleep well tonight.
I saw Mamma Mia online. Yes, already! It was a snorefest and I like ABBA!
Are your criteria production values and/or special effects? Then yes every next CGI-festooned thrill fest is the best ever made. My criteria are human drama.
I just caught part of the '89 "Batman." It does--it's pretty sad. Next to Ledger's performance, Nicholson's Joker looks like a troublesome scamp.
Did you see Gary Oldman in True Romance?
He played Drexel Spivey...a badass pimp.
Classic scene when he confronts Clarence [Christian Slater].
I find it very surprising that Heath’s family would not want Matilda very well taken care of. I bet Heath would want his fortune to go to his daughter. Is their sore feelings toward Michelle?
Okay, their = there!
A great deal, yes. Nonetheless, she made more on Brokebutt Mountain that my husband makes in five years. If she can't support her child, nobody to blame but herself.
Nope. Human drama, faithfulness to the original material, pacing, performances. Pretty much whatever makes any movie a good movie. The original “Superman” was outstanding in those (the dated effects now kind of remove you from the action, but that’s to be expected), which is why it was such a great idea to make “Superman Returns” a “pseudo-sequel” to the first two Donner films.
bump for later read
How can this be. I thought we were all one paycheck away from being homeless.
Come to think of it, what about all thosee many many iPhones sold.
Somesing wong here.
Superman 2 was made by Richard Lester who improved on the original in every way. It’s a great film.
I’ll wait until it’s on TV.
Have you seen the Donner cut? I thought it was pretty good. A decent improvement over the original part 2.
That's what everyone says nowadays. Just a piece of paper you know, like the Constitution is just a piece of paper.
Maybe the next time she gives it up to a dude, she'll have her ducks in a row. For now, she's just her Baby's Mama, and her Baby's Daddy is gone along with his money.
Yes. Not impressed. As I said before the original S2 was a mastrpiece of its kind which was better than the first film and certainly better than that awful ending that Donner had planned and used in the first film.
Well, different strokes, I guess. I liked “Superman 2” (some scenes, most notably the “revenge” scene against that trucker, rubbed me the wrong way as being very un-Superman), but I never felt it never struck me as being the greatest of them all.
It set out to be un-Superman. Lester was a long-time American ex-patiot and wanted to do a quasi send up of Americana. Superman 3 was even more in this vein.
He was pretty good too as Mr. Zorg in The Fifth Element.
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