Batman: advance ticket sales break records

A few years ago, American movie studios introduced advance ticket sales for the opening days of big-budget movies.

The next Batman movie, «The Dark Knight», is already a great success, with tickets selling like hotcakes.

In real terms, «The Dark Knight» has sold three times as many advance tickets as «Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest», and more than double the number of «Spider-Man 3» and «Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers». Only «Star Wars: Episode III – Revenge of the Sith» and «Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire» have sold more than this sequel to «Batman Begins».

In addition to being a good barometer of the movie’s potential, these numbers represent an excellent marketing tool: broadcasting and relaying – free of charge by the media! – these kinds of statistics just before the global release of a big picture adds to its hype.

«The Dark Knight» has also benefited from an impressive word-of-mouth campaign on the Internet over the past few months, as well as from an unexpected and dramatic incident: the accidental death of Heath Ledger.