HollywoodNews.com:This was edited from a phone, so pardon any formatting errors. When a heavily-anticipated film debuts alongside a mass murder that takes place during a midnight showing of said film, it’s difficult to know how to analyze the opening weekend figures. I don’t mean morally speaking (all due respect, anyone offended by number crunching after such a tragedy shouldn’t be clicking on a link entitled ‘Weekend Box Office’), I mean practically. Under normal circumstances, the fact that The Dark Knight Rises debuted with $160 million over the weekend would lend itself to the usual analysis, dealing with weekend multipliers, midnight-percentages, comparisons to The Dark Knight and other recent blockbusters, and a guesstimate in regards to final domestic outcome. But it is impossible for now to know what the effect of the shooting had on the film’s short term or long term box office performance, so for the sake of this calculation, we will basically presume that the shooting had little quantifiable effect on the numbers, and frankly looking over the data I’m inclined to believe as much. The film did about as well, give-or-take, as it would have been expected to do. But the numbers, presuming little-to-no effect from Friday morning’s tragedy, means that the third Chris Nolan Batman film was a slightly less anticipated affair than the last go-around, which will likely bode comparatively ill for long-term grosses. Basically, horror of horrors, The Dark Knight Rises might just perform like a normal mega-blockbuster. To wit, The Dark Knight Rises debuted with $30.4 million in midnight showings (second only to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II’s $43 million midnight-haul) and ended its first complete Friday with $75 million, good for the third-biggest single day of all time, behind The Avengers ($80 million) and Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part II ($91 million). Considering The Dark Knight Rises was in 2D, it surely sold more tickets on Friday than The Avengers and may have sold more than Harry Potter 7.2 (we’ll know for sure in a few days). The film earned 40% of its Friday figure via midnight showings, identical to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I ($24 million at midnight, $62 million on Friday) and just ahead of all-time worst midnight-percentage opening days Harry Potter 7.2 ($43m/$91m = 45%) and Twilight Saga: Eclipse ($30m/$68m = 44%). [...]
