The Dark Knight: Ticket Purchased!

Batman Begins was an excellent reboot to a franchise that was in desperate need of one. Seeing that Marvel Comics (now Marvel Studios) was having much success with their superhero characters on the big screen, Warner Brothers decided to bring back their vigilante hero with the creepy mask. But how do you do that and get the bad taste of the Joel Schumacher films out of everyone's mouth? Quite easily, actually. Hire Christopher Nolan (Memento, Insomnia, The Prestige) to direct and work on the screenplay with David S. Goyer (the Blade films, Dark City). Then surround yourself with talented actors such as Christian Bale, Liam Neeson, Gary Oldman, Ken Watanabe, Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine. Even second hand villians were played by excellent actors Tom Wilkinson and Cillian Murphy. The only questionable hires were Katie Holmes and Rutger Hauer although they both held their own, IMO. Although a critical success, I was always surprised Batman Begins didn't make more than the $200 million it made. Although $200 million is nothing to sneeze at, it didn't make as much as other vastly inferior superhero movies. Hopefully, The Dark Knight will make up for this.

The creative team behind the first film return with some familiar faces. Bale, Oldman, Freeman, Caine and Murphy all return and are now joined by Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckart and Maggie Gyllenhall who steps in to replace Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes. Buzz around the intrawebs suggest that The Dark Knight is poised to break some records. Which ones? Remains to be seen but apparently advance ticket sales have been through the roof and most of the tickets for opening weekend in major cities have been sold out. "As of June 27th, Dark Knight has sold eight times as many tickets on MovieTickets.com as Spider-Man 3 at the same point in the sales cycle - 21 days from the films official release." Source: FirstShowing.net

For those that don't know, Spider-Man 3 currently holds the record for biggest 3-day opening weekend with $151 million and sits 3rd for overall grosses on the superhero genre list with $336 million. The only negative thing I can say about this upcoming release is that it's quite unfortunate that the late Heath Ledger won't be around to bask in the glory of the films obvious success and potential oscar nomination that he most certainly deserves. That being said, ticket for the Friday July 18, 12:01 am showing has been purchased. I'll get to work later that day running on fumes but a happy camper. :)