What is IMAX?

What is the probability for The Dark Knight Rises to be box office hit of the year considering that it will not be released in both IMAX and 3D?

• While some of the film was shot in IMAX, none of it was shot or post-processed into 3D—what effect will this have on its success?

• Answer:

  The Dark Knight Rises is not being released in many more IMAX theaters than The Avengers, and maybe not ANY more than the latter film. It seems they are both slated to be screened at close to 300 or so theaters during their early runs in the USA. So in terms of IMAX, The Dark Knight Rises doesn't really have any big advantage. In addition, The Dark Knight Rises is not in 3D, and thus lacks the added financial bonus of 3D ticket pricing. Worldwide, this will be a HUGE factor, because outside of the USA Batman movies are not nearly as popular as domestically. In 2008, The Dark Knight made LESS money in foreign markets than it did in North America -- it is in fact the ONLY film in the top 34 highest grossing films of all time that made more money in North America than in the rest of the world. Batman strongly reflects a particularly American perspective and sentiment about vigilantism and superheroes, and just doesn't have the same level of popularity that other superheroes have overseas relative to their domestic popularity. The Dark Knight Rises is also clearly a very adult, dark film, and not at all the sort of movie parents are going to allow their younger children (meaning little kids) to go see. This also affects its global popularity as a summer superhero blockbuster -- it'll still be popular, make no mistake about that, but it won't have the same sort of broader audience size in terms of families showing up with younger children, nor the same sort of feel-good popularity that other superhero movies get. Comparing the ticket sales from the 2008 Batman film, and considering adjusted-for-inflation ticket prices, The Dark Knight Rises appears to need a pretty substantial increase in audience attendance over the previous Batman movie, if it hopes to beat the early weekend attendance of The Avengers, too. So here are the two main facts to remember: 1.  The Dark Knight will of course be a huge success, will make tons of money, and might be the biggest and most popular and highest grossing film in the USA this year; 2.  The Avengers almost surely is going to gross more than The Dark Knight Rises worldwide due to the simple math and facts regarding all of the advantages it has in its favor, while The Hobbit might beat both of those films due to the massive global popularity of that series and the added 3D and IMAX prices etc. I wrote a whole article about this over at Forbes, so I'll link to that because I get into the numbers in more detail in the article, if you're interested in seeing more specifics: http://www.forbes.com/sites/markhughes/2012/05/07/why-the-dark-knight-rises-may-not-break-the-avengers-opening-record/