Chapter 631: Battle for the Top Spot

"The Dark Knight is unstoppable, creating miracle after miracle. The strongest opening in history is born."

"Duke Rosenberg creates a box office myth and takes superhero movies to new heights."

"Darkness envelops North America as Batman conquers the North American box office charts..."

Also on Monday, other media outlets hyped the news. Although The Dark Knight's massive opening weekend was undeniably tied to rising ticket prices, the film's nearly 28 million admissions in its first weekend also set a new North American weekend attendance record.

Quite a few media outlets even began debating whether The Dark Knight could challenge the North American box office myth created by Titanic.

Duke knew this was just a fantasy. Setting everything else aside, The Dark Knight's promotional and distribution strategies, as well as the limited number of IMAX cinemas and 3D screens, doomed the idea as an impossible mission.

Especially the former—the pre-release hype had driven far too many viewers into theaters during the opening week.

In most respects, this was a good thing, but it would also inevitably impact the film's long-term theatrical run.

In fact, according to Duke and Warner's estimates, The Dark Knight would create an unparalleled box office myth in its first few weeks. After all, this unique superhero movie delivered completely new thrills. However, once audiences grew accustomed to the style, the overly heavy themes would make it difficult for people to return to the theater to watch it over and over again.

There was another point that could not be ignored: this was the fiercely competitive Summer Season.

Therefore, once the hottest opening weeks passed, the film's box office was bound to experience a massive plunge.

Signs of this had already begun to show on Monday, though they were still very subtle.

Compared to Sunday's $59.23 million, The Dark Knight's first workday box office plummeted by fifty-four percent, bringing in $27.25 million on Monday. On the following Tuesday, the box office continued to decline, grossing $24.49 million for the day.

The baseline created by the film's first weekend was simply too high. Even with a slightly larger drop, the resulting box office figures were still staggering.

By Wednesday, the North American box office for The Dark Knight smoothly broke the $250 million mark, leading observers to generally expect that its North American gross would inevitably break $300 million this week.

Since I Am Legend—produced by Sky Film Studio and distributed by Disney's Buena Vista Pictures—was set to release on the upcoming weekend, and its test screening reception was quite good, Duke and Warner Brothers intensified their promotion for The Dark Knight.

Especially in North America, which was the absolute top priority, Duke led the crew to continuously appear on the internet, on television, and in print media, doing everything possible to keep capturing the public's attention.

When they arrived in New York on Wednesday, Duke and the crew sat for an exclusive interview with the NBC Television Network. IMAX took over from Heath Ledger and the charity show as the new focal point for promotion.

"The Dark Knight is an ambitious story, and I needed a grand, majestic dimension to express it. Therefore, the IMAX format was my best, and perhaps only, choice."

Facing the cameras, Duke naturally heaped praise on IMAX.

"The negative area of IMAX is ten times that of standard 35mm film. The volume of visual information it carries is far greater than 35mm film, and this scale of film makes the images incredibly sharp, bright, and majestic."

He looked into the camera and said earnestly, "This is a replication of the experience of watching a movie for the first time as a child—the curiosity and thrill of the big screen. That experience is hard to recreate later in life. So, I needed the biggest screen possible."

However, when the reporter asked John Schwartzman, Duke's director of photography voiced a tiny bit of complaint.

"Because of the unimaginable screen size, audiences might overlook the film's cinematography, but they should be able to feel it. Excellent cinematography is the foundation of the image."

He explained, "Duke used many long takes and sharp editing techniques. He hoped to use this to make the audience notice the details on IMAX—this is a subversion of action movie editing. On IMAX, you can even see things below the horizon. You can see the flicker of outside light sources in Batman's eyes. Whether in a regular theater or at home, you won't see details like this."

"Trying to shoot a movie in IMAX format is difficult just in terms of preparing and using the equipment. An IMAX camera alone weighs 135 pounds, and its massive bulk makes moving it extremely difficult."

As the only female member of the post-production team and the first assistant director of the film, Anna Printz was also a key focus of the program.

"Sometimes, when shooting downward angles, we simply couldn't hold the camera back," she said. "The production cost of IMAX is three times that of standard 35mm film, and such high expenses meant the crew didn't dare slack off in the slightest."

"There is only one laboratory in the entire world that has produced IMAX recording and playback equipment."

This was a morning program with limited time.

At the end of the interview, Duke added, "Every IMAX film platter can only shoot for three minutes, and we can't even film for the full three minutes; we have to leave some margin. This feeling of changing the reel every three minutes is like shooting on Super 8 film as a kid. Furthermore, every replaced roll of film takes a week of post-production processing."

Watching the trio being interviewed on TV, Stephen Carragher furrowed his brows deeply. The box office and word-of-mouth for this movie were simply astounding, especially the latter. It made him, a die-hard fan of The Godfather, feel deeply threatened.

Every morning, the very first thing Stephen Carragher did after waking up was check the IMDB ratings and the TOP250 ranking. This directly caused him to start every day in a bad mood. Under the relentless efforts of him and a group of others, The Dark Knight had finally been dragged down to 9.7 points, but the rating for The Godfather was falling even faster.

This morning, the IMDB rating for The Godfather had already dropped to 9.1 points. Even a fool could see there was a problem.

Before last weekend, the proportion of 1-point votes for The Godfather accounted for only 1.4 percent. Now, it had surged to 3.7 percent. Clearly, someone was tampering with the numbers.

Without even having to think hard, Stephen Carragher knew exactly who was behind this. It had to be Duke Rosenberg and the brainless fans of The Dark Knight.

Turning off the TV, Stephen Carragher booted up his computer. Taking advantage of the little time he had before leaving for work, he sent out another mass email, rallying his Godfather fan group to intensify their attacks. They had to drag The Dark Knight down from its pedestal as soon as possible.

Sending emails wasn't enough. As he walked out of his house, he continued to make phone calls nonstop.

"Gibbs, you have to mobilize the people around you to vote on The Dark Knight. Remember! You can only give it one point!"

"Miranda, get all your friends moving..."

Meanwhile, inside a company in Los Angeles, Norman Hiller had just received a new email notification. He opened it, read through it, and couldn't help but smile and nod.

"Norman, I've already gotten in touch with the heads of movie fan associations in Chicago, Seattle, New York, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, and many other cities. They've already called on their members to go vote on IMDB."

'What was lost must be taken back!'

This was Norman Hiller's thought. From the day The Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King lost its throne at the number one spot on IMDB, he had been waiting for a chance to strike back. While Duke's films over the past few years had been good, there hadn't been another true masterpiece. Now, The Dark Knight could finally rally their strength together.

A fan war centered around IMDB had completely erupted.

With the explosive opening of The Dark Knight, the film's rating on IMDB remained stubbornly high. At its peak, it even sat at an unbelievable 10 points, and countless Duke fanboys emerged as a result. These people completely ignored the reactions of fans of films like The Godfather; while elevating The Dark Knight to the status of a divine masterpiece, they were also covertly disparaging other works.

Fans of The Godfather had fought hard to snatch the number one spot on the TOP250 away from The Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King, so naturally, they refused to just hand it over. They continued using their old tactics. Under the rallying calls of Stephen Carragher and others, anyone with the appropriate IMDB voting privileges flocked to spam The Dark Knight with 1-point ratings, wanting to drag the film down as soon as possible.

Over more than ten years in the film industry, Duke had also accumulated a massive fan base. Die-hard fans like Norman Hiller were by no means a minority. In almost every major and mid-sized city across the United States, there were fan associations dedicated to Duke Rosenberg or the "Explosion Maniac." Sparked and mobilized by the heads of these various associations, hundreds of thousands of fans swarmed toward The Godfather like a tidal wave. They had only one goal: to tank the film's rating lower and lower, ensuring it could no longer pose a threat to The Dark Knight, and perhaps even dragging it below The Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King.

Although IMDB ratings seemed to be the most democratic system, a simple score still left a massive amount of room for manipulation in the hands of ordinary movie fans, even without deploying professional paid online shills.

There were many factors that influenced the IMDB TOP250 scores. The first, of course, was the number of voters.

There was a very interesting phenomenon on IMDB. A seemingly mediocre movie with only a dozen or so votes would often start with an incredibly high rating—though naturally, this high score rarely lasted long. It was hard not to suspect that this was a promotional tactic by the production and distribution companies.

Therefore, the charts introduced restrictions on the number of voters and required that only votes from active users be counted toward the rankings, maximizing the fairness and objectivity of the TOP250 list.

But in the face of films on the level of The Godfather, The Dark Knight, and The Lord of the Rings 3: The Return of the King, these restrictions actually played very little role.

It was entirely imaginable that when Duke's die-hard fans finished watching a film as dazzling and passionate as The Dark Knight, wrapped entirely in ecstasy, it was very difficult for them to make a sober and rational judgment of the movie's quality. Moreover, those who rushed to vote on IMDB the moment they finished a movie were mostly hardcore fans. Thus, it wasn't hard to understand why the rating for The Dark Knight initially soared to a perfect 10.

On the other hand, there were also deeper psychological factors at play—the "collective unconscious." Amidst a frenzy of praise or disparagement, it was incredibly hard for most people to stick to their own judgments. As for The Dark Knight, under the overwhelming pressure of widespread A+ reviews and the deafening cheers on IMDB, most people found it very difficult to say "no" to it.