Billion Dollar Batman

by Bruce Scivally

  On July 23, when he was in Barcelona to promote the film, Bale appeared at a press conference and was asked about the altercation. He responded, “It’s a deeply personal matter. I would ask you to respect my privacy in the matter.” The press conference was followed by a premiere with thousands of fans lining the red carpet; Bale signed autographs for nearly half an hour.213

  The Times of London reported on August 14 that no charges would be filed against Bale over the alleged assault. A spokesman for the Crown Prosecution Service said, “There is insufficient evidence to afford a realistic prospect of conviction, and accordingly the police have been advised that no further action should be taken against Mr. Bale.”214

  The same month that Bale was accused of assaulting his mother, he lost his temper with director of photography Shane Hurlbut on the set of Terminator Salvation in New Mexico. Hurlbut had distracted Bale while the actor was filming a scene, and Bale unleashed a profanity-laced tirade that was soon posted on YouTube.com. Bale later apologized to Hurlbut, though he resented the outburst being leaked to the internet. Bale’s managers urged him to release a statement, but he refused to do so, preferring to allow the incident to fade into obscurity.215

  As its release date neared, The Dark Knight received mostly positive reviews, celebrating the riveting performance of Heath Ledger. Manohla Dargis of The New York Times wrote that Ledger’s death, “might have cast a paralyzing pall over the film if the performance were not so alive. But his Joker is a creature of such ghastly life, and the performance is so visceral, creepy and insistently present that the characterization pulls you in almost at once.”216

  Peter Travers of Rolling Stone was also effusive in his praise, writing: “How can a conflicted guy in a bat suit and a villain with a cracked, painted-on clown smile speak to the essentials of the human condition? Just hang on for a shock to the system. The Dark Knight creates a place where good and evil—expected to do battle—decide instead to get it on and dance...I can only speak superlatives of Ledger, who is mad-crazy-blazing brilliant as the Joker. Miles from Jack Nicholson’s broadly funny take on the role in Tim Burton’s 1989 Batman, Ledger takes the role to the shadows, where even what’s comic is hardly a relief...If there’s a movement to get him the first posthumous Oscar since Peter Finch won for 1976’s Network, sign me up.”217

  In The Times of London, Tim Teeman gave the film a five-star review, saying, “Ledger is so terrifying and unpredictable that his very presence on screen makes you horribly nervous—the atrocities he visits on his victims are bloody and vile-minded, and when he arrives at a party at the Wayne penthouse you feel sick as he observes the guests. He preys on our fear and sense of violation; what can Batman do to save us from that?... The Dark Knight will stun and surprise, delight and terrify, and it won’t be the special effects, gizmos and bat-heroics that will keep you pinned to your seat, but the moral force of the script and an ending that takes our hero, unbelievably and brilliantly, to even darker realms.”218

  In yet another five-star review appearing in The Times of London, James Christopher wrote, “You will feel utterly numb after the screening of The Dark Knight. The film is bleak and brilliant. Batman is Hamlet and Heath Ledger is a sensation as the Joker. The late legend doesn’t just steal the film, he murders it in style...He certainly makes Jack Nicholson’s Joker in Batman (1989) look like a badly drawn cartoon. The chill realization that Ledger has calmly laid ethical mind-traps under every gothic frame is what makes Christopher Nolan’s film, and the actor’s performance, so powerful. The parameters of the comic book blockbuster have shifted forever.”219

  Justin Chang, in Daily Variety, called the film a “heroic reinvention of the iconic franchise. An ambitious, full-bodied crime epic of gratifying scope and moral complexity, this is seriously brainy pop entertainment that satisfies every expectation raised by its hit predecessor and then some...Utterly indifferent to simple criminal motivations like greed, Ledger’s maniacally murderous Joker is as pure an embodiment of irrational evil as any in modern movies.”220

  Not every critic was bowled over by the film, however. In The London Sunday Times, Cosmo Landesman gave the film only 2 stars, writing, “People mistakenly think that if you give a character a ‘dark side,’ he must be interesting, but this Batman manages to be dark and boring...Of course, there’s the Joker. There’s nothing jokey about this Joker; he’s a grungy, greasy psychopath who will leave his signature smile carved on your face. He provides the element of the fantastic and freakish that the film needs. Uncoupled from the confines of realism, Ledger is free to let rip and give us a character who is scary because you can’t hurt him. He is in a place beyond good and evil, human and ‘other.’ Suddenly, the screen comes alive in what is a one-man show of verbal play and sadistic theatre. Yet when Ledger isn’t on screen, The Dark Knight goes on for so long, it should be called The Long Dark Knight of the Soul.”221

  History began repeating itself when parents found the film too intense for small children, a reaction similar to what Batman Returns had encountered fifteen years earlier. Producer Charles Roven said, “Every parent needs to be their own guide on a PG-13 movie. I certainly wouldn’t recommend it to anybody under 10.”222 In the U.K., The Dark Knight received a 12A certificate, comparable to a PG-13 rating in the U.S.—children 12 years of age or older could attend unaccompanied by an adult. However, the British Board of Film Classification (BBFC) received 70 complaints about the certification, based on the film’s violence. Scenes of the Joker describing how he enjoys killing people with a knife were found particularly objectionable.223 Labour MP Keith Vaz, chairman of the Commons home affairs committee, said he would summon the BBFC to its October hearings on knife crime. “The BBFC should realize there are scenes of gratuitous violence in The Dark Knight to which I would certainly not take my 11-year-old daughter,” Vaz said after seeing the film. “It should be a 15 classification.” The BBFC admitted that Warner Bros. asked for The Dark Knight to be classified as 12A. They also admitted that they were under pressure from Hollywood studios to keep the classifications low so that as many people as possible could see films unrestricted.224

  On August 5, The Times of London reported that Iain Duncan Smith, the former leader of the Conservative Party known as “the Quiet Man,” was anything but quiet after taking his 15-year-old daughter to see The Dark Knight. By that point, the film had received 82 complaints. Smith wrote a letter to The Times saying the film was “relentlessly violent,” adding, “I was astonished that the board could have seen fit to allow anyone under the age of 15 to watch the film. Unlike past Batman films, where the villains were somewhat surreal and comical figures, Heath Ledger’s Joker is a brilliantly acted but very credible psychopathic killer, who extols the use of knives to kill and disfigure his victims during a reign of urban terrorism laced with torture.” On its website, the BBFC defended its decision by writing, “The Dark Knight is a superhero movie and the violence it contains exists within that context, with both Batman and the Joker apparently indestructible, no matter what is thrown at them.”225

  THE DARK KNIGHT SOARS

  With anticipation building to a fever pitch, the studio allowed theaters to begin selling tickets at midnight, a ploy designed to help pump up the opening weekend box-office numbers. When tickets for the July 18 midnight showings of The Dark Knight quickly sold out, 3 A.M. screenings were announced. When those sold out, theaters scheduled 6 A.M. screenings. Online ticket sales service Fandango.com reported that there were well over 1,500 late-night/early morning screenings of the film scheduled at theaters that normally didn’t open their doors until 10 A.M. In a Fandango survey, about 38 percent of ticket buyers said they planned to take some or all of Friday, July 18 off from work to see The Dark Knight.226 A week before the film opened, it had already sold out the entire first week’s showings at New York’s Lincoln Square Imax theater, save for some 6 A.M. screenings.227 One patron listed his two $16 tickets to the Imax theater’s midnight showing on eBay. When bidding w
as finished, the tickets went for $122.50, including shipping.228

  The 2-1/2 hour film was scheduled to open at 4,366 theaters nationwide. With Fandango.com and Movie.com reporting the strongest advance sales they’d ever seen, industry pundits were anxious to see if the film would enter the record books.229 Of the $67.85 million earned on Friday, $18.5 million came from midnight shows, beating the previous midnight record set by 20th Century-Fox’s Star Wars: Episode III—The Revenge of the Sith, which grossed $16.9 million from 3,663 theaters in 2005.230 Overall, during its opening weekend, the film racked up $158.4 million in ticket sales.231 That was enough to edge out the previous box-office champion Spider-Man 3, which had opened a year earlier with $151.1 million. $67.85 million of The Dark Knight’s revenues came from its opening Friday, beating the $59.8 million Spider- Man 3 had taken in on its opening day. The Dark Knight also broke Spider-Man 3’s record for best Imax debut, earning $6.2 million at 94 Imax theaters around the country, as compared to Spider-Man 3’s $4.7 million.232 The film had already opened in Australia, beginning a day earlier than usual to take advantage of a local holiday. On Wednesday and Thursday alone—its first two days of release down under—it brought in a respectable $4.45 million.233

  The same day that it opened in the U.S., it launched in 20 international markets in the first phase of its international roll-out, including Asia, Brazil, Hong Kong and Mexico. In Latin America, it debuted on 4,400 screens,234 earning $41 million.235 Mexico brought in $6.6 million, and Brazil $4.3 million.236 In Hong Kong, the film grabbed 64% of the local box office with $2.12 million at 37 theaters.237 After the phenomenal opening weekend, Warner Bros. knew they had a potential monster hit on their hands. “It just took on a life of its own,” said Dan Fellman, Warner Bros.’ president for theatrical distribution. “You never expect anything like this.”238

  Even with its astounding success, Warner Bros. feared that the film’s theatrical debut would be undermined by unauthorized copies leaking to file-sharing sites on the internet. To combat this, the studio had employees patrolling the aisles of theaters wearing night-vision goggles, on the lookout for hand-held camcorders. The first copy to leak to the internet, 38 hours after the film’s debut, was traced to a theater in the Philippines. Warners had tried to discourage pirates by flooding file-sharing sites with fake copies of the film after the first pirated copies surfaced. The studio was thought to have saved several millions in lost ticket revenue through such tactics.239

  Nonetheless, despite Warner Bros. anti-piracy efforts, by the end of 2008 illegal copies had been downloaded more than seven million times around the world, according to BigChampagne, a media measurement firm. With the economic downturn, it appeared that more and more people were turning to illegally downloaded movies, contributing to shrinking DVD sales; in 2008, DVD shipments dropped to their lowest levels in five years.240 Moreover, not all of the illegally watched copies were downloaded; streaming sites, many located in countries like China with lax piracy enforcement, allowed people to watch movies on their computers without transferring a full copy to their hard drives. Since streaming was hard to monitor, media companies didn’t have a clear idea of just how much content was being stolen. Eric Garland, the chief executive of BigChampagne, said, “It is becoming, among some demographics, a very mainstream behavior.”241

  The Dark Knight continued to burn up the box office in its second week, when it was scheduled to open in the U.K., Italy, Belgium, Holland, Scandinavia and several Eastern European markets.242 From Friday to Sunday of its second weekend, it grossed $75.6 million, delivering the best second-weekend gross in recent history. In analyzing its success, studio executives felt it was because of a confluence of factors. First was the expert promotional campaign headlined by marketing chief Sue Kroll that built anticipation for Ledger’s performance as the Joker. Secondly, the morose film fit the mood of the nation. And lastly, in the bad economic climate, movies were still a relatively cheap form of entertainment. “We are starting to see a lot of repeat business,” said Warner Bros. president of theatrical distribution Dan Fellman. “Older audiences are also starting to turn out in big numbers.” The publicity surrounding Christian Bale’s alleged assault of his mother and sister may also have boosted the box-office.243

  In its first ten days of release, The Dark Knight grossed a record-setting $314.2 million domestically.244 After twelve days, its worldwide gross was $440 million. The 8.5 million tickets it sold overseas exceeded the combined grosses of the next four highest grossing films—Hancock, Kung Fu Panda, Mamma Mia! and X-Files: I Want to Believe—even though Warner Bros. had yet to launch the film in key markets such as France, Germany, Japan, South Korea and Spain, where it was to open in August.245

  It was thought that The Dark Knight might actually overtake Titanic as the number one box-office success of all time. Titanic was the number one film domestically for an astounding 15 weeks, remaining in theaters for nine months and collecting $600.8 million. “You can’t compare this movie to Titanic. That was a different time, and a different genre,” said Warners president of distribution Dan Fellman. Yet for four consecutive weeks, The Dark Knight remained the number one movie in America. In its fourth week, it pulled in $26 million at the box office. By that point, it had earned $441 million in 24 days.246 It was finally knocked off the number-one position by Paramount Pictures and Dreamworks’ Tropic Thunder, which took in $26 million in its first week of release, as compared to The Dark Knight’s second-place $16.8 million in its fifth week of release. After five weeks, its total domestic gross reached $471.5 million,247 enough to put it past Star Wars to become the second-highest-grossing film of all time. Paul Dergarabedian, president of the box-office tracker Media by Numbers, said, “It’s a film that is rewriting the record books every day, redefining our notions of what a blockbuster can be.”248 Warner Bros.’ Fellman said, “There’s never been another movie like this that has done $500 million in business. That’s a gross that will be remembered for eternity.”249

  By mid-August, The Dark Knight was playing on 7,700 screens internationally, and was still the top money earner. The cumulative box-office overseas had reached $328.6 million, nearly double what Batman Begins—the top grosser of all the films internationally, with $166 million—had earned. The Dark Knight’s combined domestic and international gross grew to more than $800 million, making it only the 19th film to ever cross that mark. And that was before the film opened in Germany.250 Conventional wisdom held that a dark superhero like Batman was a tough sell to foreign markets, but The Dark Knight proved the exception. During the final weekend of August, the film was still number one internationally, earning $19 million on 6,580 screens in 62 markets, bringing its international total to $417 million.251

  Over the Labor Day weekend, The Dark Knight became only the second film in history to cross the $500 million mark in domestic grosses. Warner Bros. predicted that it would eventually earn $530 million, putting it second only to Titanic.252 It also set a record for Imax, grossing $42.6 million in that format.253 The success of The Dark Knight gave Warner Bros. a narrow lead in market share over Paramount at the summer box-office, despite Paramount having two heavy-hitters in Iron Man and Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.254

  The stellar performance of The Dark Knight led Time Warner to report better- than-expected third-quarter results on November 5, 2008.255 By mid-December, as it was ending its international runs, The Dark Knight had grossed $530.6 million domestically and $466 million abroad for a worldwide total of $997 million, more than double the $371.8 worldwide gross of Batman Begins, making it hands-down the most profitable Batman film ever released and, for a short while, making it the second highest-grossing film in history, after Titanic.256

  While the film burned up the box office, Morgan Freeman made headlines when he was involved in an accident on Sunday, August 3, 2008. Freeman was driving a Nissan Maxima on Mississippi Highway 32 in Tallahatchie County around 11:30 PM with passenger Demaris Meyer. The car app
arently went onto the shoulder and Freeman overcorrected. The car left the road, became airborne, and flipped several times before landing upright in Lisa Hudson’s front yard. Hudson ran over to the car to help and grabbed Freeman’s hand. He asked her to help him get out, but he was pinned. More bystanders arrived, and when one tried to snap a photo of Freeman with a cell phone camera, Freeman said “no freebies, no freebies.” Emergency crews soon arrived on the scene and, using the jaws of life, removed Freeman and Meyer, both of whom were wearing seat belts, from the wreckage. Both were airlifted to the Regional Medical Center in Memphis.257 The accident left Freeman with a broken arm, broken elbow and minor shoulder damage; the injuries to his left arm left his hand paralyzed. Meyer, who suffered a broken left wrist, broken right scapula and a torn labrum in her right shoulder, was released the next day, but Freeman remained in serious condition.258 Mississippi Highway Patrol spokesperson Ben Williams said there was no indication that either alcohol or drugs were involved.

  In February 2009, Meyer’s attorney, Gloria Allred, filed a lawsuit against Freeman, claiming that the actor had been drinking the night of the accident at the Bayou Bend Golf and Country Club and later at a friend’s house, and that he was negligent when the car ran off the road. Meyer also complained that she was wrongly labeled “the other woman” and accused of having broken up Freeman’s marriage; in fact, Freeman and his wife separated in December 2007 and were already in the process of getting a divorce when the accident occurred. On the night of the accident, Freeman had offered to let Meyer stay at one of the three houses on his property after they attended a party. Meyer sued for medical expenses, pain and suffering, lost wages, permanent disability and property damage. Freeman settled the lawsuit in November 2009.259 He still often wears a tan glove to soothe the pain in his left hand. Some journalists attributed Freeman’s accident to “The Curse of Batman,” coming as it did within a year of the death of Conway Wickliffe, the accidental overdose of Heath Ledger, and the assault allegations against Christian Bale.260