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The Dark Knight Rises

Kim Hollis: The Dark Knight Rises has earned $287.1 million in ten days of release. Saving the other aspects of the conversation for Topic #2, what are your thoughts on its box office thus far?

Bruce Hall: Things looked potentially grim on Friday but a 60% drop in sales wouldn't have surprised me even with no Aurora, and no Olympics. Word-of-mouth has been generally good so as people rediscover the film, I suspect we'll be talking about it again.

Tim Briody: Without taking any other factors into account, anything that earns $287 million after 10 days is absolutely phenomenal. The problem is The Dark Knight was at $313 million at the same point. While you would expect The Dark Knight Rises to not exactly match the pace of the film that eventually became the second highest grossing film of all time to that point, that gap is going to significantly widen with each passing day, to the point where it finishes well below what we were expecting 10 days ago.

Jason Barney: Well, this is all about the expectations situation, and for those of us who follow the week to week numbers scenarios there is a lot to talk about. I think the current Batman's performance at the box office is fine, actually. I can't discount what happened in Colorado, even if the new film is getting high marks at RT. That is not to say that I won't see it, because I will, but I also think there is a balance between the "art" discussion and the real effect those shootings had on people.

Back to the expectations, though. If we were talking about most films, $280 million after a few days of release would be a dream scenario. For some who follow this stuff every day, it is a disaster versus this particular film's expectations. The first Chris Nolan Batman was good, and garnered interest. The second with the Joker was good and set all of those records, but we should also remember that some of those records were based on the death of the one of the lead actors in that film. Thus, the box office success was inflated because of tragic events off screen.

Versus some expectations, the film is not performing as hoped. We all need to take a breath, though. The film has already surpassed its production budget. It is making tons of money overseas. If it doesn't match some expectations as an earner at the box office, that is okay. Perhaps there is a little sting concerning the performance of Avengers as well. People wanted there to be a race and now there isn't.

Expectations. That is what this is all about. If it doesn't match dream expectations at the box office, the movie industry will still go on.

Felix Quinonez: For most movies, $289 million in 10 days would be amazing but The Dark Knight Rises is not most movies. I think it's hard to separate the shooting from the movie's box office performance because I believe they've become so entangled. But if that tragic event hadn't occurred and these were the numbers the Dark Knight Rises was putting up I would have been disappointed and surprised because I believe it would have and should have made a lot more.

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