Assuming the 77.6/46/39 figures hold, what would Batman have opened to had there not been the midnight massacre, which effectively killed nearly much of the buzz and enthusiasm surrounding the opening weekend rush to go see this movie. Obviously, 163 million is still an enormous gross, and the film looks headed for 500 million+. But, I find it clear that the film missed out on a large portion of ticket sales which would have normally occurred had the shooting not occurred. "How much would The Dark Knight Rises have opened to without the shooting?" will go down as one of truly great "what if?" question surrounding the box office.

We have always had "What if The Phantom Menace opened on a Friday?". Now we have "What if the Avengers was not in 3D". I think this question with Batman trumps all of them. 163 million in tickets sold is still in line with SOME predictions, but it seems clear those would have bee large under estimations in a normal setting. There are a number of factors-pre release, and primarily post release- which I think show TDKR was heading for a huge, near record gross prior to the shootings.

Two important prelease factors:

-Enormous tracking. Tracking indicated the film was garnering significant more interest than Potter and Avengers, with a huge 7% lead in first choice interest.

-Huge presales. Over 30 million in presales were sold. TDKR was going to be a hybrid of the huge presales movies (Twilight, Potter) and the more walk up friendly movies (Avengers, Transformers). The huge presales were just another sign of the enormous interest in the film.

Obviously, prior to the opening of the film,interest, hype, buzz, and all that were sky high. Every measurable indicator pointed to something enormous occurring this weekend. Though it still did with 163 million, the potential for much more was certainly there. Now, how much of this potential would The Dark Knight Rises have utilized without the shooting? Lets examine a few factors.

1. 30 million midnights. This is a huge number Less than what I had hoped for, but still an enormous number. This is the only number we have which was not effected by the shooting, and it is enormous. It is the largest number ever for a 2D film, and based on most accounts, seemed to be doing near capacity business. It "only" played on 3,700 screens at Midnight (compared to twilights 4,000), but still out grossed it. I will concede this prerelease argument; the ceiling for midnights must have been in the low to possibly mid 30s. TDKR came pretty close to maxing out that, which is very impressive. In other words, the midnight attendance certainly seems to have indicated TDKR was going to play towards the higher end of the expectations/live up to the tracking.

2. Friday and Saturday estimates are roughly the same. Current estimates put midnightless Friday around 47 million, with Saturday at 46 million. Though it is tough to determine what % of people would have passed on seeing Friday vs the same number for those on Saturday, it seems like there is a bare minimum of $47 million worth of people who would have seen regardless. I.E. their personal enthusiasm was NOT killed, despite the shooting. This seems like a huge # of bare minimum business, and hints at the enormous potential the film possessed.

3. 47-47-39 day gross despite wide spread reports of families staying away from the film in bulk. Fabio claims it played terribly during the day in relation to other films due to the lack of families, whose interest was killed from the shooting. It made up for it & still managed the #s it got due to huge night showings. The *expectation* was that this would play well with families throughout the day - which didnt happen- and then play with with the 18-35 crowd at night, which DID happen.

Now, before anybody argues that this movie doesnt not play to families, i call bs. It does not play to them to the degree AVENGERS does, but a lot of families were included in the 583 million TDK made. Many families, and many little kids, were in the theaters at midnight before word of the massacre spread. Two of the victims were young children; one age 6 and 1 3 months old. It's not Pixar, but plenty of families & plenty of children were going to be seeing Batman this weekend. The logical explanation for their absence this weekend is the shooting.

The question becomes: how much business did they lose due to the lack of families?

4. Widespread reports of empty showings in general. It's not just families, though they really hurt it during the day. The manager at my local theater called the performance a "disaster". She talked about readying so many showings, at 3 am and after midnight. Said they sold out 5 midnight showings in presales, along with 4 more throughout the weekend. They have not sold out a single one outside of these sell outs. She said that families, as mentioned above, were almost completely MIA. The audience was almost exclusively adults.

Take aways:


Potter, post midnights earned about 48 million - roughly the same as Batman. Avengers post midnight earned about 63 million. Batman looks like it would have normally really pressed the Avengers number. On a normal day, I think Batmans opening day falls in the 85-90 million range, and would have probably been fudged over the opening day number. Instead, it (supposably) opened to 77 million. It looks to have lost at least 10 million in business on Friday.

The lack of families likely cost it at least another 10 million on Saturday. 133 million dolars worth of business from basically, JUST adults certainly hints at a huge weeken gross normally. It seems likely that the film would have increased on Saturday in comparison to Friday with a surplus in family business. If it lost 10 million in Friday business, it lost at least this much on Saturday as well.

Sunday business would have been a combo of spill over & effects of the excellent word of mouth. Probably to the tune of another 10 million.

If the day grosses hold at 77, 47, and 39, I think the way it NORMALLY would have played out would have resembled:

90/60/50 - or 200 million. Right in line with tracking and expectations. In general, though - I think it is safe to say that The Dark Knight Rises would have opened in the 195-205 million area. I think it would have come verrrry close to the record, but would have been a short side. Still easily the attendance record. The shooting cost the film at least 35 million, if not more.

I think there's two quick and dirty approaches to account for the impact but I'm on my phone so I'm not doing the math

1) Take Avengers, adjust for the 3d surcharge. There's no way it should have made less. Really.

2) Compare average drop in the Top 10 this week vs TDK's and Avengers' weeks. What's the discount rate?

I agree it should have done around TA admissions for the weekend because the Friday would have been so much bigger.

You are right actually Magnus.

I think it would have a hard time getting TA admissions on Sunday forget about about Saturday.

...why not

It's Batman

It's broken the OW record time after time (four times, right? Of six tries?)

Why would the Avengers be more popular than the sequel to the most well-regarded comic book film ever?

Impact is there for sure and huge one IMO. Had it played fair and square, given the midnights hype people were projecting in KJ forums I don't think $200m OW was a lock. I mean after those insane amounts of posts claiming about HUGE midnight sellouts, it didn't even get to $35m midnights. One has to agree that a 2D movie needs more sellouts over 3D movies which wasn't really accounted most of the time here.

I think it would have done $195m-$200m so yes there is a loss of about $35m-$40m and that is a HUGE loss over OW. The multiplier from here may or may not be great still so it will be interesting to track its numbers.

Do you think this will motive Nolan and company to make a 4th? One where people can enjoy it and not have a real-world issue in the back of their mind?

Nope absolutely not.

What guarantee is there of that outcome? There could be a copy-cat attack. There could be some other national tragedy that takes the focus off of movies. Nolan is powerful, but he can't control events around the world.

I am open to something as small an effect as $5-10m and something around $40m or more. It is just too difficult to gauge at the moment. All the movies were hit extremely hard this weekend, and for other movies to fall this much without TDKR doing $200m or so, seems to point to the box office being down quite a bit.

People argue about families not showing up, but I am sure many single and older people stayed away as well. Just because the crowd was predominantly this demo, does not mean that for every 4th, 5th, or 10th person there wasn't some person that would have been in the theater that chose to stay home this weekend due to the shooting. On Thursday, I was going to go with my wife today, but now we are not because the shooting makes her uncomfortable.

probably less. all press is good press, so it's very likely the tragedy boosted admissions figures.

Nope there is no way this press boosted its figures. I think it lost some big money though how much is the question.

I'm thinking there's a greater impact on the female demographic.
Men might still be drawn to the film to entertain ideals of justice while the ladies are repelled by the security implications.

good point

BOG's early Friday reports are indicative of where the movie was headed. 80m-90m opening day, 170m-190m opening. That's a pretty big range but this has to be the reason why none of the day grosses have really outdone the midnight figure.

At least 25m more on OW.

I think people are really starting to overestimate the effect of the shooting, just like they underestimated the amount of effect Ledger had on the last film. No way it affected 15-25%.

I saw the film in two different states over the weekend. Once in Baltimore at night, and it was sold out, and another Sunday afternoon in the suburbs and that was mass occupancy as well. People did realize it was a freak tragedy for the most part. The place that got hit the most was Colorado, and people wanting to take really young kids. I still saw plenty but as we also know most really small kids weren't going to see this to begin with. It rained all over and there was really nothing to do but see the movie.

Also most importantly. Even before the shooting even took place, I had raised issues that it couldn't hit a 80 million first day with 28+ midnights. Middle of July for such a tentpole was pretty weak (In the still super amazing category relax everyone) If it had any chance at Potter's OD it needed at least 35 in midnights. I had it grossing 172-180 million the rest of the weekend based on the midnight number. That's about 7% or so.

However, I think that could easily be made up, with a better than expected hold this weekend. Remember after the tsunami in Japan, movies had ridiculous holds and increases. Obviously this won't do that as its not even comparable. But if it can manage just near TDK drop, the 10-15 million it lost opening weekend will be made up with no problem.

Have you looked at the other projected drops for the weekend? The smallest drop in the top ten is 50%. Friggin' Moonrise Kingdom crashed.

And the tentpole film of the year making a ridiculous amounts of money has never affected the box office before?

Seeing family films and art films getting affected more makes even more sense to me. You're not going to take a group of 5-10 small children to see Brave, Spiderman, or Ice Age the day of a movie theater shooting. Art house films tend to attract older audiences that watch the news every morning. They'd be inclined to skip them as well. Add in the fact that most films were going to drop 40-55% with Batman being released, it's not that ridiculous.

Even though the shooting took place at a Batman film. 90-95% of the people that planned on seeing it did so. They just went to other showings or in larger groups.

If you remove Journey and Get Smart, 2008's drops in this same weekend were very similar. Nothing really suggests an overall negative effect higher than 15%. And, considering its 30M from midnights, I think TDKR probably lost about that %.

Again with the midnight number, look at Half Blood Prince and Order of the Phoenix. Prince almost doubled Order's midnights, yet the rest of the weekend is almost identical.

And magnus, even with the midnights, it was pretty obvious it wasn't coming close to Avengers. I'll probably end up draggin up my old thread, but Ledger gave the last film an extra 30% for opening weekend. You take the away the normal 15% it should have increased between films, they should have had similar grosses. Inflation, a sold predecessor and a weak marketplace made up for the hype Ledger brought last time.

I'd highly suggest looking at the weekend Deathly Hallows Pt 2 was released. There were a number of drops in the 35-40% range. Nearly everything this weekend fell 60%.

Check out when TDK came out, only two family films fell good. As I said earlier, those films would have been affected most by the shooting.

You're comparing it to one of the most consistent franchises, in terms of gross. They just got more and more frontloaded, but ended up with roughly the same amounts in total, until...the final one.

Also, even if "only" 15% of the people who were going to see TDKR did not because of the shootings, that's still $192m, or roughly $30m lost. Yeah, not quite Avengers, but attendance record fo sho.

And 15% is not ridiculous at all. Look up polls asking whether the shootings affect people's weekend plans. You'll see much greater numbers than 15% for "YES." Not exactly the best way to figure this out, but ignoring that, it's still not a ridiculous number when you really think about it. 15% of people are turned off from going to the movies because of a theater shooting? Not so ridiculous, especially in this country.