Posted by Kirk in Academy Awards, Box Office, Release Date | 5 comments
This is How ‘Dark Knight’ Will Break ‘Titanic’s’ Record
Ever since it’s outstanding opening, people have been wondering if ‘The Dark Knight’ would have the kind of legs that could dethrone ‘Titanic’ as the all-time, domestic box office champion. ‘Titanic’ managed to rake in just over $600 million. ‘The Dark Knight’, as of September 11, is at $513 million. Many have thought that there was only one way ‘The Dark Knight’ could top ‘Titanic’. Today, Warner Brothers decided to take that one way.
The Hollywood Reporter is saying that WB has decided to rerelease ‘The Dark Knight’ in theaters come January. This would give the film considerable Oscar buzz, as that’s the height of the Oscar debate period.
“It’s just a matter of bringing it back as a reminder for people,” a studio insider said.
The domestic distribution president at Warner, Dan Fellman, has confirmed that there are ongoing talks between Warner and executives at IMAX to rerelease the film on the large-screen format. There is no word yet on whether or not it will also be rereleased in more conventional theaters
‘The Dark Knight’ is also set to hit DVD shelves in December. Whether or not that will have an effect on the rerelease’s box office take remains to be seen.
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- We Are Movie Geeks » ‘The Dark Knight’ Gets It’s Re-Release and Oscar Campaign - [...] re-releasing ‘The Dark Knight’ in theaters and IMAX on January 23rd, 2009.  We reported a few months back that ...
and the story also goes on to say “But with the title set to hit DVD in December, it’s now apparent anyone hoping the Batman sequel would soar to “Titanic” heights will be disappointed. “Dark Knight” already ranks as the second-highest-grossing movie ever, after “Titanic’s” phenomenal $1.84 billion — a mix of $600.8 million in domestic boxoffice and $1.24 billion in foreign coin registered in 1997 and 1998.” It’ll come close, to be sure.
If a January rerelease of ‘Dark Knight’ doesn’t push the domestic gross past ‘Titanic,’ well, I will be really surprised.
If the film performs 1 million and above during the weekends, Warner Bros. will keep it in theaters… so, it’s at about 515 million. Only 85 million left to go.
“The Dark Knight” may actually have a chance at surpassing “Titanic” with a January rerelease. January is known for being the slowest movie month of the year and most of the movies are never very successful (with the exception of this years “Cloverfield”). I feel that Warner Bros. would have a better chance of surpassing “Titanic”s record if they held off on releasing “The Dark Knight” on DVD in December. There’s no question that it would not sell millions upon millions of DVD’s no matter what month it was released. December is a major market for summer movie DVDs for obvious reasons, but unless some special unseen version of Knight is released in theatres, why would a big fan base want to see it again on the big screen to bring in that much money when they can simply just rent it and save gas and movie ticket prices?
I could definitely see people wanting to see it on IMAX again. That is an amazing experience that cannot be duplicated by any home theater system.