Batman Begins may not have made the kind of money mega franchises like Spider-Man or Pirates of the Caribbean have, but it looks like The Dark Knight may be on the way to making up for that, by kicking the box office’s collective ass.
Last week we told you that showings of The Dark Knight were already selling out in some cities, now comes confirmation from the folks at Movietickets.com that pre-sales for this thing are absolutely through the roof. According to their data Dark Knight is selling more advance tickets than six of MovieTickets.com's Top-10 Performing Films of All-Time at the same point in the sales cycle. Those 6 films it’s beating would be box office busters like Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest, Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, Star Wars: Episode II, The Matrix Reloaded, The Passion of the Christ, and Spider-Man 3. That’s some pretty big pre-sales mojo.
It still seems unlikely that TDK will break all the biggest records of movies like Spider-Man 2, but it’s definitely a contender. Lookout Iron Man, you won’t be the biggest movie of the summer for much longer.
Oddly enough, the overbearing power of The Dark Knight doesn’t seem to have entirely killed Mamma Mia!’s box office chances. It’s being released the same weekend as TDK, and most had assumed that would spell death for the musical. But MovieTickets claims it’s selling 50 times more tickets than the very successful musical Hairspray did at the same time in its sales cycle last year. MammaMia! may actually manage to thrive in TDK’s shadow.
