The next installment of the “Dark Knight” movies, produced by Time Warner (TWX) is set to be released in theaters on July 20, 2012, four years after Batman battled with the Joker (Heath Ledger) and eight years in the storyline. “The Dark Knight Rises” is highly anticipated due to the success of its prequel.
“The Dark Knight” can attribute much of its hype to the tragic death of Heath Ledger, who played the Joker, the antagonist character of the movie. The movie made $158.4 million in the opening weekend.
“The Dark Knight Rises” is showing higher expectation figures than its prequel, though it is slightly behind the figures “The Avengers” showed prior to its opening. The movie’s advertising strategy is utilizing a cloud of mystery around the storyline, and the early-released trailers gave insight to a chaos and destruction-filled plot.
Business Section: Investing Ideas
The massive anticipation of each of the “Dark Knight” movies has lead to large opening weekend results, and this next installment is not showing signs of letting up.
With such big expectations, movie theater stocks are set to make huge revenue from the movie. Attendees not only supply revenue from ticket sales, but also from beverage and food sales at the theater concessions.
We’ve made an index of the stocks that we think will be the most affected by the movie’s success.
Use Kapitall tools to analyze Time Warner and some theater stocks. Do you think the movie will be a blockbuster or a bust?
Interactive Chart: Press Play to compare changes in market cap for TWX, IMAX, RGC, CNK, and CKEC:
Interactive Chart: Use the Turbo Chart to compare the stock performance of TWX and IMAX against the performance of the S&P 500 Index (SPX):
(Written by Danny Guttridge)


































Definitely a blockbuster. While the second film saw a bump in publicity and sales due to Ledger's death, the third film will benefit from it being the last chance to see the Nolan version of the franchise in theaters.