‘The Dark Knight’ Tenth Anniversary Celebrated With Imax 70MM Release

Ten years ago today Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight swept into theaters and Warner Bros. is celebrating with an exclusive one-week limited re-release of the movie in Imax 70MM starting August 24.

Jeff Goldstein, Warners’ President of Domestic Distribution, made the announcement today. The Dark Knight will play in four Imax locations: AMC Citywalk in Universal City, CA; AMC Lincoln Square in New York; AMC Metreon in San Francisco; and the Ontario Place Cinesphere in Toronto. Tickets go on sale this Friday.

The Dark Knight took the Batman series to a completely fresh, elevated level, with the New York Times’ Manohla Dargis praising at the time, “Pitched at the divide between art and industry, poetry and entertainment, The Dark Knight goes darker and deeper than any Hollywood movie of its comic-book kind.”

The movie opened to $158.4M, and finaled at $534.8M stateside, $1 billion WW, and became a cathartic experience for Heath Ledger fans seven months after his sudden death. From the minute Warner Bros. began dropping teasers for the pic in advance of its opening, Batman fans were stunned and stoked by Ledger’s sublime turn as Batman’s iconic nemesis The Joker. The Oscar buzz for his performance began immediately and realized itself the following year with a posthumous best supporting actor Oscar win for the Australian actor. In addition, The Dark Knight won a second Oscar, for Richard King’s sound editing, out of its eight nominations.

With The Dark Knight, Nolan broke new ground shooting select sequences of the movie with Imax cameras making the Batman sequel the first major feature to utilize Imax 70mm film. Nolan co-wrote the movie with his brother Jonathan Nolan. Story was by Christopher Nolan and David S. Goyer. Emma Thomas, Charles Roven and Christopher Nolan produced. Benjamin Melniker, Michael E. Uslan, Kevin De La Noy and Thomas Tull served as EPs. Legendary Entertainment co-produced the movie.