On a new day, Gilbert led the main creative team as they embarked on a North American promotional tour.
Starting from Los Angeles, they traveled eastward and finally concluded in New York, covering promotions in eight cities.
If it wanted to achieve massive box office success, The Dark Knight had to rely on the North American market. In fact, all commercial blockbusters must conquer North America—only by conquering North America can one be said to have conquered the world.
The Dark Knight was a very special genre film. It was a superhero movie, yet unlike Spider-Man and Iron Man, it was not lighthearted or simple.
In reality, Gilbert received quite a few negative reviews about The Dark Knight, and this was still within the North American market. Similar situations were not uncommon in other markets either, which made solid marketing and promotion essential.
While the North American market was in the midst of a heated release, other parts of the world also began rolling out The Dark Knight simultaneously.
When The Dark Knight landed in the United Kingdom, the entertainment headline of The Times gave its verdict: "A milestone in superhero cinema, the undisputed No.1."
When The Dark Knight arrived in France, the French film industry called on the public to resist Hollywood's invasion. Yet French moviegoers rushed into theaters faster than Paris surrendered—there was simply no stopping them.
Before the great Gilbert even reached Paris, the French people had already offered up their loyalty.
Le Figaro cried wolf, openly declaring Gilbert unbeatable. In short, The Dark Knight achieved remarkable success in France.
Germany's Berlin newspaper stated: "The era of superhero films seems to be arriving. At this very moment, The Dark Knight, directed by Gilbert, appears to tell people what a superhero film should truly look like."
Italy's Turin newspaper focused on Gilbert's Italian heritage: "Some may say that Italian filmmakers are no longer what they once were.
But with The Dark Knight, Gilbert tells everyone that the Italian faction has never vanished from Hollywood."
Alongside the media praise came box office numbers that collectively took off.
Relying on Gilbert's formidable box office appeal, even though superhero films could struggle to adapt outside North America, The Dark Knight managed to avoid such awkwardness.
In its opening weekend in the United Kingdom, The Dark Knight created a first-weekend box office of 22.30 million dollars. Reporters from Fleet Street even captured Prince William of the royal family going on a date with his girlfriend Kate to watch The Dark Knight together.
However, after exiting the theater, Kate's expression did not look very good—she probably could not handle the heavy tone of The Dark Knight.
The film continued to produce outstanding box office results, earning 18.62 million dollars in its first weekend in France, 23.36 million dollars in Germany, and 8.97 million dollars in Italy.
The remaining fifteen European markets collectively brought in 24.42 million dollars. Starting next week, the film would continue to roll out across other European territories, further expanding its screening scale.
In other overseas markets, mainland China achieved a first-weekend box office of 10.63 million dollars, equivalent to more than 88 million RMB.
The South Korean market also delivered 10.33 million dollars. Although the island nation market did not have a large audience base, it still achieved a first-weekend box office of 13.27 million dollars.
Other markets such as Hong Kong and Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, Indonesia, and others combined brought in a total of 11.25 million dollars in their first weekend.
Without exception, The Dark Knight received an overwhelming amount of positive reviews from the media in these countries—it was a clean sweep.
Including markets such as Australia, Mexico, Brazil, and other regions in Oceania and Central and South America, The Dark Knight raked in a staggering 155.67 million dollars overseas in its first weekend.
Even so, this still could not compare to its performance in the North American market.
Due to large-scale early-stage promotion, a massive number of viewers were driven into theaters. On Friday alone, The Dark Knight raked in 69.53 million dollars at the North American box office, setting a new single-day box office record in North America.
This single day's revenue exceeded the weekly box office of many films, and nearly all major North American media outlets reported on the moviegoing wave sparked by The Dark Knight.
On the second day, The Dark Knight saw a slight dip, earning 64.23 million dollars for the day.
By the third day, the film's heat finally showed some decline, and queues were rarely seen at slightly more remote theaters.
However, thanks to continuous promotion and word-of-mouth from IMAX viewers, the IMAX version of The Dark Knight remained nearly impossible to get tickets for.
Even after IMAX required its 187 IMAX theaters across North America to screen from 6 a.m. until the final showing at 11:30 p.m., maximizing scheduling as much as possible, audience demand still could not be met.
Many fans who could not buy IMAX tickets collectively stormed IMAX's official website, demanding more screenings, which caused the site to crash temporarily.
IMAX's operations director had no choice but to come forward and apologize, stating that he had already done everything possible to coordinate, yet IMAX theaters were still sold out.
Reporters noticed that when the operations director stepped out to apologize, the smile at the corner of his mouth was impossible to suppress. He was clearly smiling and indeed, he had every right to smile.
Subsequently, IMAX announced partnerships with Regal Cinemas and the AMG theater chain to comprehensively promote the construction of IMAX auditoriums across North America.
After the experiment with The Dark Knight, IMAX fully believed that IMAX technology was now suitable for Hollywood, and at this point, it was time to take bigger strides.
In fact, after seeing The Dark Knight achieve massive success through IMAX, many films in development or already in production began to consider whether they should use IMAX technology.
Obviously, this technology would drive up production costs, but the generous returns it brought were equally substantial.
Especially after The Dark Knight took the North American weekly box office crown with 48.35 million dollars on its third day and a first-weekend total of 182.11 million dollars.
That's right—The Dark Knight broke records once again.
The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King had once set a first-weekend box office record of 151 million dollars, shocking all of Hollywood. A few years later, that record was broken by Spider-Man 3 with 167.40 million dollars.
But Spider-Man 3 held that record for only one year. With the release of The Dark Knight, Gilbert personally reclaimed the record with a first-weekend box office of 182.11 million dollars.
When this opening-weekend box office figure was revealed, all discussions surrounding The Dark Knight became even more heated.
Even more remarkable, after achieving such a high opening-weekend box office, The Dark Knight maintained an impressive 9.5 rating on IMDb, surpassing The Godfather, The Shawshank Redemption, and even Gilbert's own The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King.
This, however, greatly upset The Godfather fans. One veteran Godfather fan wrote a long post on IMDb, denouncing The Dark Knight as a disgrace to the film market.
This, in turn, angered The Dark Knight fans and Gilbert's supporters. Gilbert's fan army mobilized, engaging in online battles against The Godfather fans, naturally including rating manipulation.
Fans continuously boosted The Dark Knight's score while lowering The Godfather's, causing its rating to drop to 9.0, allowing The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King to surpass it.
Seeing they couldn't win, The Godfather fans began stirring chaos, pretending to be The Dark Knight fans to attack The Shawshank Redemption and other films on the rankings.
Thus began an online rating free-for-all, with scores for various films dropping rapidly. Yet because so many gave The Dark Knight perfect scores, it remained in first place on IMDb's chart.
Fans of The Dark Knight and Gilbert swore that this time, they would never let the old story of The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King repeat.
Such an extraordinary film deserved to be at the top of the charts.
Currently, IMDb had temporarily disabled the rating feature, but this could not stop fans from arguing online.
This is the internet age, where people's emotions seem even easier to ignite.
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