Dark Friday

"The Dark Knight" is contributing greatly to increased traffic and ticketing on the Web. With nearly 7 million monthly unique visitors, Fandango is seeing an 18% increase in year-over-year traffic to its site, according to Nielsen//NetRatings for June 2008.

At this point in the film's sales cycle, 'The Dark Knight' is outselling all major releases since 2005's 'Star Wars: Episode III - Revenge of the Sith'," notes Rick Butler, chief operating officer of Fandango, "and it's benefiting from the highest fan anticipation of any movie this year. The late Heath Ledger's portrayal of The Joker marks one of those rare occurrences where an actor's Oscar-worthy performance coincides with certain box office success."

Advance ticket sales for Warner Bros' Batman: The Dark Knight "continue to grow at a pace unlike any other film in history". Even the number of locations in North America where the comic book caper will be playing -- 4,366 -- is an Industry record.

There are also approximately 3,000 theaters that will start screening the actioner at 12:01AM Friday. By all accounts this should be Hollywood's best-ever 3-day overall North American weekend at the box office: the number to beat is last year's $151+ million.