"Dark Knight" already illuminating theater marquees

It's become a clever gimmick. A movie can't open until a certain date but if you want to stage a public relations coup, you say your movie -- one you really want to promote as a blockbuster -- will not wait until the regular showtimes on opening date. It will stage special screenings that begin one second after midnight on the day in question.

George Lucas started this trick with his later "Star Wars" segments. Now Warner Bros. is getting into the act with "The Dark Knight," the latest entry in the Batman franchise.

Here's the deal, though. The last Batman flick, "Batman Begins," directed by Christopher Nolan, was the first film in the series to get it right -- to portray Batman on screen the way he was created in the comics. Not only that, the film was credible on its own. The movie didn't open all that strongly, but positive word-of-mouth carried it to respectable profitability and then DVD sales were phenomenal. Now comes "The Dark Knight," also directed by Nolan, and anticipation is naturally high.

Not only that, word is already out that Heath Ledger's final performance on film as The Joker in "Knight" is a knockout. There's already Oscar talk floating around Ledger. OK, so you might call that hype, but it's working.

How do I know? Well, try and get a ticket to one of the opening midnight showings of "The Dark Knight." For the most part, they are completely gone, sold out. There was such a demand for them the theaters decided to let the demand spill over and they scheduled 3 a.m. showings. Now they have sold out and theaters are selling tickets to 6 a.m. shows. That's right. 6 a.m. And that's in places I've never heard of before. Like Eagan, Minn. Does anyone outside of a 100-mile radius of Minneapolis know where Eagan is or really even care? It certainly doesn't have the reputation as the movie-going capital of the Iron Range, but there you have it -- four hours before the local movie house usually opens for the day, the theater will be having its third showing of "The Dark Knight."

Want to see it in iMax? Lotsa luck. According to the New York Times, all the showings at the Lincoln Center, to cite one example, are sold out for the entire first week of "The Dark Knight"'s run. Well, almost. There's a few seats left for some of those 6 a.m. showings.