After break­ing the record for open­ing in the most the­aters nation­wide (4,366 of them), Bat­man has now achieved the record for high­est gross­ing mid­night sales. Last night TDK took a whop­ping esti­mated $18.5 mil­lion — NOT includ­ing the 3am and 6am screen­ings! This breaks the pre­vi­ous record set by Star Wars Episode 3: Revenge of the Sith. To put this into some con­text, Bat­man Begins made $15m on its first day whilst the high­est sin­gle day open­ing belongs to Spider-man 3 at $59.8m.

You may want to take these fig­ures into account when pre­dict­ing The Dark Knight’s week­end gross.

Source: Vari­ety:

Warner Bros.’ “The Dark Knight” grossed the most ever for mid­night shows, rack­ing up an esti­mated $18.5 million.

The follow-up to 2005’s “Bat­man Begins” out­stripped the pre­vi­ous mid­night record set by Fox’s “Star Wars, Episode III: The Revenge of the Sith” which grossed $16.9 mil­lion from 3,663 venues. “Sith” went on to make $50 mil­lion in its first day, which was a Thurs­day. The high­est sin­gle day open­ing record is cur­rently held by Sony’s “Spider-man 3″ which made $59.8 million.

“Dark Knight” unspooled in a record num­ber of sites — 4,366 — out­strip­ping the wide bow of Disney’s “Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End” which touted a the­ater count of 4,362.

Warner Bros. reported that the $18.5 mil­lion did not include 3:00 A.M. and 6:00 A.M.

“Bat­man Begins” opened on June 15, 2005, a Wednes­day, earn­ing $15.1 mil­lion in its first day. Both “Bat­man Begins” and “The Dark Knight” are directed by Christo­pher Nolan.

As for the mid­night shows them­selves, they looked like a laugh — pic­tures by tech1987, Bren­dan Falkowskiand Clev­er­grrl