‘The Dark Knight’ aims to soar in second weekend

Link

When a movie performs steadily at the box office, it’s said to have legs. This one has wings.

“The Dark Knight,” the latest Batman film, set a record for highest first-weekend haul after opening with a gross of more than 158.4 million, beating out last year’s “Spider-Man 3.”

The movie has its sights on a new target — highest second-weekend gross.

Tracking numbers released earlier this week — sometimes accurate, often not — predict about $70 million for the coming weekend, which would put “The Dark Knight” near the record of $72.2 million set by “Shrek 2″ in 2004.

Even the biggest movies usually see a large drop in their second weekends, especially in the summer, when the schedule is full of potential blockbusters. “The Dark Knight” will go up next against another buzzed-about film with a built-in audience, “The X-Files: I Want to Believe,” opening Friday.

The winner? “Dark Knight,” hands down, said Steve VanWagoner, vice president of marketing for Loeks Theatres.

“Even if ‘The Dark Knight’ dropped off 65 percent and ‘The X-Files’ met its tracking number, it still wouldn’t beat ‘The Dark Knight,’ ” he said, noting “X-Files” was projected to do a solid $48 million this weekend.

“But it’s not going to drop 65 (percent). It’s probably not going to be close. It’s a huge snowball rolling down the hill, at this point.

“Because of the nature of this movie, with huge numbers and a huge buzz that hasn’t stopped, we’re expecting another big weekend with a number of sellouts.”

“The Dark Knight” is helping the industry as a whole, according to the Los Angeles Times. As of Monday, box office receipts for 2008 were at $5.36 billion, down 0.9 percent from this time last year. That’s even taking into account rising ticket prices. Movie attendance is down 3.7 percent. Attendance in 2007 was down about 1 percent from 2006.

The film stars Christian Bale, Aaron Eckhart and Maggie Gyllenhaal, but much of the hype is thanks to the late Heath Ledger, whose widely acclaimed performance as the Joker has generated Oscar buzz.

Since “The Dark Knight” opened at 12:01 a.m. Friday, more than 200 screenings have sold out at Loeks theaters, which include Celebration Cinema locations and Studio 28.

“The Dark Knight” also is an IMAX attraction. Screenings in the IMAX theater at Celebration Cinema North have been sold out for much of the week.

The film set a record for biggest opening weekend in the IMAX format, making about $8 million. About a half-hour of the 152-minute movie was shot using an IMAX-specific camera.

The DeCou siblings of Muskegon — Carissa, Christopher and Cameron — drove down to catch the movie on the five-story-tall IMAX screen Tuesday afternoon.

“I had read that this was the way to see it,” said Christopher, 18. “I wanted to make sure I got the IMAX experience. It’s a great film. It was amazing.”

IMAX numbers still represent a small portion of a film’s gross, because there are relatively few screens — Celebration North and Lansing being the only options in the area. However, VanWagoner said the movie is likely to remain in the IMAX theater through the end of the summer.

“There isn’t another major IMAX film coming out for a couple of months, so this will easily sustain us,” he said. “This will go into September, no problem.”

But viewers take caution: the screen is huge, and the experience can be overwhelming.

“I got a little sick,” said Carissa DeCou, 21. “It was intense, that was for sure.”