As “The Dark Knight” took off overseas, Warner Bros. Pictures International became the third major international distributor to surpass $1 billion in foreign boxoffice revenue.
This is the eighth year in a row and the 10th time overall that WBPI has hurdled the industry benchmark.
Warner Bros. said that the Caped Crusader’s opening blast of $40 million from only 20 markets “pushed” the company “over the $1 billion mark in international boxoffice.”
Overcoming the disappointing performance of its early summer tentpole, “Speed Racer,” the company’s other summer releases — the newest Batman entry, “Get Smart” ($65 million) and returns from key selected markets of New Line’s “Sex and the City” — made up for the let down.
Strong contributions came earlier in the year from “I Am Legend” ($210 million in 2008 for total of $328 million), “10,000 BC” ($174 million), “Sweeney Todd” ($100 million), “The Bucket List” ($81 million), and the German film “Keinorhasen,” which took in $49 million in 2008 for a total of $63.5 million.
Paramount Pictures International passed the $1 billion benchmark June 16 and Fox International followed July 8.
Last year, for the first time in industry history, five of the six MPA companies topped $1 billion by the end of July; a sixth studio joined by the end of 2007.
Sorry Spidey, but the Caped Crusader is the new king of the box office.
“The Dark Knight” opened with record-breaking numbers this weekend, taking in an astounding $158.3 million from Friday – Sunday, knocking “Spider-Man 3” from atop the box office record books.
In 2007, the third installment in the Spider-Man franchise opened with $151 million.
But that wasn’t the only record “The Dark Knight” claimed in its opening weekend. In fact, a total of eight records now belong to Batman and friends.
The film, starring Christian Bale and the late Heath Ledger, also posted the biggest single day ever at the box office, taking in a whopping $67 million on Friday alone – another record previously held by “Spider-Man 3.”
Here is a complete breakdown of the eight box office records “The Dark Knight” now holds after its opening weekend:
- Largest number of opening theaters with 4,366 (Previous record: “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” opened in 4,362 theaters in 2007).
- Biggest midnight preview gross with $18.4 million in 3,040 theaters (Previous record: “Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith” and its $16.9 million in 2,915 theaters in 2005).
- Biggest IMAX midnight previews, setting a new record with $640,000 (included in the $18.4 million preview number).
- Biggest single-day gross in box-office history with $67.8 million (Previous record: bests the $59,841,919 set by “Spider-Man 3” in 2007).
-Biggest opening weekend gross in box office history with $158.3 million (Previous record: beats the $151,116 million set by “Spider-Man 3” in 2007).
-Biggest opening weekend gross for an IMAX release in box office history with $6,214,061 million in 94 theaters with $66,107 per theater. (Previous record: $4.7 million set by “Spider-Man 3” in 2007.)
- Biggest opening weekend of 2008 with $158.3 million (Previous record: “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” with $101.1 million from May 23-25, 2008)
- Biggest July opening ever (Previous record: “Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest” with $135,634,554 on July 7, 2006).
OK, now that legions of moviegoers are shrieking “Oscar! Oscar! Oscar!” after seeing Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight,” which category should he enter: lead or supporting?
That’s a tricky Oscar question. On one hand you might think Heath Ledger should go supporting because, technically speaking, “The Dark Knight” is a film about Batman. But come on, Heath Ledger has the big, flashy role — he’s the chief force bearing down on all of the terrifying action — and it’s his spooktacular performance that moviegoers are storming theaters to see.
A good analogy might be Forest Whitaker, who recently won best actor in “Last King of Scotland.” James McAvoy actually had the main role, as measured by the most dialogue and screen time, but his performance as a good doctor was dwarfed, crushed and left trembling in the shadow of his monstrous patient.
The same was true for Denzel Washington, who won best actor for “Training Day.” He had less screen time than costar Ethan Hawke, but Hawke was so overwhelmed by Washington’s performance as a ferocious, corrupt cop that he dutifully ducked into the supporting race and let Washington go lead.
Sometimes it’s the size of the role, emotionally speaking, that determines whether it should be defined as lead or supporting. Sure, Anthony Hopkins only appeared in 22 minutes of “The Silence of the Lambs,” but he won best actor because he gobbled up the scenery, the screen and everything else as Hannibal the Cannibal. Academy members didn’t dare to deny him an Oscar statuette for dessert.
Heath Ledger’s role in “The Dark Knight” is very similar to Hopkins’ in “Lambs,” come to think of it — so creepy that it continues to haunt moviegoers long after they flee theaters, terrified.
However, in terms of traditional category placement, Heath Ledger may have the best shot to win in supporting. When Jack Nicholson played the Joker in “Batman” in 1989, he was nominated in supporting at the Golden Globes (then was snubbed by Oscar voters, strangely).
And traditionally, that’s where the cartoonishly crazy roles are put — Ben Kingsley in “Sexy Beast,” James Coburn in “Affliction.” And speaking of Coburn, that reminds us of another aspect of the supporting race that may apply to Heath Ledger: If he wins an Oscar in February for “The Dark Knight,” it will largely be because Academy voters want to salute an impressive, if brief, career that included a past Oscar nomination (”Brokeback Mountain”).
That qualifies Ledger as a perfect candidate for a veteran achievement award, which is the unofficial nickname of the supporting-actor category when it goes to the likes of Alan Arkin in “Little Miss Sunshine,” Martin Landau in “Ed Wood” or Jack Palance in “City Slickers.”
But, wait! Maybe it doesn’t matter what category Heath Ledger lands in, since some Oscarologists believe he’s doomed at the Academy Awards where only one star has ever won from the grave.
Don’t get carried away with all of the Oscar buzz for Heath Ledger in “The Dark Knight” that you see in USAToday, Wall Street Journal, Reuters, everywhere. Remember: Only one star has won an Oscar from the grave (Peter Finch, “Network”) and roles like the Joker are rarely even nominated.
Maybe this next Oscarsfactoid may help to put things in more clear perspective. After the beloved Spencer Tracy died in 1967 after giving a dynamic, heartfelt performance in best picture nominee “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” he was widely expected to win best actor, but lost to Rod Steiger (”In the Heat of the Night”). However, Tracy’s de facto widow Katharine Hepburn won best actress for a rather tame turn with little screen time in “Dinner.”
Bottom line: Oscar voters wanted to bestow a hug after losing Tracy, yes — but they just didn’t want to hug the dead guy.
When Peter Finch passed away, the situation was very different from Tracy’s and Ledger’s. The latter stars died more than six months before the Oscarcast. Finch died from a heart attack just two weeks before the Golden Globes while he was actively campaigning to stop that juggernaut Robert DeNiro (”Taxi Driver”), who’d swept the film-critics’ awards. Oscar and Globe voters were still stunned by Finch’s loss when they inked their ballots and they couldn’t resist checking off his name.
Heath Ledger bears a striking similarity to James Dean. Both were heartthrob thespians whose promising careers were cut short by tragedy. Dean had two posthumous Oscar nominations. The first — for “Giant” — came nearly half a year after Dean died in a car wreck. The next year he was nommed for “East of Eden” and he lost both times.
When Oscar nominations come out next January, Heath Ledger will have been dead for a year. Given all of the Oscar hubbub he’s generating now, I’m sure he’ll be on that list of contenders, but can he really win?
Oscar voters aren’t wild about campy villain roles in popcorn flicks like “Dark Knight.” The only time one got nominated was Al Pacino as Big Boy Caprice in “Dick Tracy” (1990). Jack Nicholson’s widely celebrated Joker in “Batman” (1989) — the same role now played by Heath Ledger — was nominated for a Golden Globe, but not an Oscar, which is odd considering how nuts academy members are for Jack. (Nicholson holds the records for most nominations and wins among male actors.)
And Oscar voters don’t usually like villainous roles unless the actor rides to victory atop a best-picture sweep like Anthony Hopkins in “The Silence of the Lambs.”
But — wait — that old trend may be changing. Just this past year we saw the trophies for best actor and supporting actor go to stars portraying bloodthirsty monsters: Daniel Day-Lewis and Javier Bardem.
And maybe the whole world, even Hollywood, is different today than it was when those other posthumous Oscar examples occurred. If so, then maybe this joker can get the last laugh.
If the number of advance tickets sold is any indication, his new movie, The Dark Knight, likely will become one of the highest-grossing movies of all time. But few people who see it will walk away with Bale’s name on their lips.
They’ll be talking about Heath Ledger. Even without the sentimental distinction of being the late actor’s last role, Ledger’s performance as the Joker is the best thing about the movie.
The performance, writes Ty Burr in the Boston Globe, “makes you mourn a gifted man’s stupid death with fresh and vigorous sorrow.”
“He’s mesmerizing in every scene,” enthuses David Denby in The New Yorker.
Before The Dark Knight opened, a campaign was in the works to award Ledger a posthumous supporting actor Oscar. He would become the first actor so rewarded since Peter Finch won for Network in 1977.
It should surprise no one if Warner Bros. is discovered helping to orchestrate the groundswell — it’s their job to market the movie, and their performance in that regard is as relentless as the Joker’s siege on Gotham City.
But the work lives up to the hype.
As director, Christopher Nolan’s strategy in The Dark Knight, as it was in Batman Begins, is to leaven the comic book spectacle with as much reality as it will hold. To my mind, he was far more successful in the richly layered Batman Begins than here, but Ledger’s Joker — with all of his odd ticks and Grand Guignol excesses — somehow improbably anchors this movie.
As is evident from Jack Nicholson’s acting work in the 1989 Batman movie (or Cesar Romero’s work on the camp 1960s Batman TV series), it is easy to lapse into caricature in this role. The Joker, by definition, is over the top — a magician of mayhem, a sadistic killer in clown makeup, with the sickest sense of humor imaginable. But Ledger makes him full-bodied, magnetic and complex.
It’s not so much that we believe this creature could exist off screen, but Ledger makes us certain that, if he did exist, he would be just like this.
This Joker’s triumph as a character isn’t all Ledger’s doing, of course. His lines were written for him. And the scene that stands out the most in my memory — it still brings a smile to my face — works as well as it does thanks to the costumer and makeup artist as much as Ledger’s actorly choices and precision.
Poor Bale. But how can his Bruce Wayne / Batman compete?
Something similar happened with Batman Begins. The movie solidified the actor’s hold on stardom — you might even say it made him a star, given the box office performance of his previous movies — but it was a director’s film. Nolan, rightly, won acclaim for bringing a vitality, emotional depth and grit to the Batman saga that previously had not existed on film.
The Dark Knight is a director’s film, too. There unquestionably is a grand vision at work here, and that vision belongs to Nolan.
Though it may be over-praised, the movie — borne aloft by a wave of ecstatic critical opinion, saturation marketing and cross-promotional partnerships — is without question an Event, the rare summer “popcorn movie” that actually may find its most enthusiastic following among adults.
It is a phenomenon, pure and simple. Its opening weekend domestic gross may reach $130 million. It’s playing on a record 4,366 screens, and Nikki Finke reports on her L.A. Weekly blog that nearly all of the 1,600 IMAX screens in the country have sold out in advance of the opening, according to her industry sources.
There is no way to tell what percentage of the audience will go because of Ledger, but the movie has been widely spoken of since January as “Ledger’s final performance,” that fact eclipsing in many minds the significance of it being the sequel to perhaps the best comic-book movie ever made.
Batman Begins was a success, but its $371.8 million worldwide gross wasn’t spectacular, especially for a film that cost $150 million to make. Tracking figures indicate far greater familiarity and appeal for the sequel. The marketing juggernaut accounts for much of that, but Ledger undoubtedly also is a factor.
The depth of commitment by Ledger’s fans wasn’t apparent to many people until he died.
It isn’t an overstatement to say the outpouring of grief for an actor just coming into his own was reminiscent of that surrounding James Dean at the time of his death. Dean also died, shockingly, before his star reached its zenith. Both Rebel Without a Cause and Giant were released after Dean’s death. The raw greatness of his performances in these posthumously released movies burnished a legend that still is with us.
Ledger had done his best work in Brokeback Mountain, for which he was nominated an Oscar two years before he died. It would seem unrealistic to expect his work in a comic-book movie to equal or surpass it, but that is what has happened. His Joker performance makes it all too painfully clear what greatness likely lay ahead.
The combination of Ledger’s achievement here and sentimental regard — not to mention clever studio marketing — may make the movie one for the record books.
Heath Ledger’s performance in the upcoming Batman film is winning him rave reviews, with many critics pushing for the late Australian actor to be awarded a posthumous Oscar.
Five months after his death, the first critics to see The Dark Knight - due in Australian cinemas in two weeks - are giving the actor plenty of praise.
Rolling Stone magazine critic Peter Travers says Heath’s portrayal as the Joker was brilliant.
“It’s typical of Ledger’s total commitment to films as diverse as Brokeback Mountain and I’m Not There that he does nothing out of vanity or the need to be liked,” he wrote.
“I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker.
“If there’s a movement to get him the first posthumous [acting] Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976’s Network, sign me up.”
Sam Rubin, a respected entertainment correspondent for Los Angeles KTLA network, said Ledger would “absolutely be nominated for an Oscar, and at this point in the year is a hands-down favourite to win it posthumously”.
“Ledger offers perfect pitch, perfect tone, his Joker hits all the right notes,” he added.
Meanwhile an Associated Press review described the Joker as possibly Ledger’s finest performance - even better than his Brokeback Mountain role for which he was nominated for an Oscar.
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