Win, lose or draw, The Dark Knight Rises was going to make a ton of money, and it’s currently one of a handful of films that’s made over a billion dollars world-wide.
There’s also tons more to be made on home video when it’s ready, and that’s no big news flash because Batman equals big bucks.
Still, among the box office pundits, one question remains. Could The Dark Knight Rises have done even better if it was in 3D? It definitely gave The Avengers an edge, 3D tickets can cost $4 more, but again, The Avengers was going to make a ton of money regardless.
For those of you who are sick and tired of hearing about 3D, you’ll probably be happy to know that Christopher Nolan refused to shoot The Dark Knight Rises in the format, while also insisting it be made on film for as long as celluloid is still around.
According to ComicBook.com, 52% of opening weekend Avengers tickets were 3D showing, so by their calculations, The Dark Knight Rises could have made a potential $511,671,154 in the U.S. instead of it’s domestic gross of $439,476,000 – meaning it potentially could have made another $72,195,154.
Of course, nobody is crying poverty, because again, Dark Knight Rises is going to make a ton of more money on home video. Indeed, along with Harry Potter, the caped crusader is one of Warner Brothers’s longest lasting and lucrative franchises, and will continue to be even with Chris Nolan and Christian Bale making it clear that Rises is their last Dark Knight flick.
As Nolan told Deadline, he was considering doing Inception in 3D, but ultimately “decided we’d be too restricted by the technology. We looked at post-converting it, actually did some tests, and they were very good. But we didn’t have time to do the conversion that we would have been satisfied with.”
As for not making Batman in 3D, “I view those as iconic, operatic movies, dealing with larger-than-life characters,” Nolan continued.
”The intimacy that the 3D parallax illusion imposes isn’t really compatible with that…We want to be consistent to the look of the previous films. 3D has always been an interesting technical format, a way of showing something to the audience. But you have to look at the story you’re telling: is it right?”
