Dark Knight Shatters Records

If you had a chance to read last week’s blog, you’ll know that I was somewhat irrationally exuberant about Batman’s “The Dark Knight.” Apparently so was everyone else as the movie shattered almost every record in the books, making it the single highest grossing weekend surpassing Spiderman 3 which was released in May as opposed to July of last year. Box Office critics will tell you that the month of May usually brings in much stronger numbers for big blockbuster movies but this year’s Batman blew that statistic out of the water. “The Dark Knight” brought in $155 million dollars on its first weekend as is expected to do incredibly this week as well. In fact, with no new releases this Friday, the movie is set to break even more records. 

One of the beneficiaries of the Batman phenomenon is IMAX which had its best weekend on record due to the release of “The Dark Knight” in IMAX theaters across the country. For IMAX it was the highest grossing weekend, highest domestic opening per screen and highest grossing global advanced ticket sales. As I mentioned in my blog entitled “Dark Knight a Shining Light,” (maybe you can put the link to it) I raved about the IMAX experience. Six scenes were filmed with IMAX cameras, the first time ever that a major film has been partially shot using IMAX cameras and boy, you can see the difference. This morning the CO-CEO of Imax Rich Gelfond joined me to discuss the record breaking numbers, what it means for the future and what it means for the stock which has been on a run of late but has disappointed in previous quarters. Take a look.