Parental Discretion advised? How the Dark Knight ad campaign will likely prevent a record opening.

As much as I would love to see The Dark Knight shatter every box office record in the book and allow Batman to reclaim his title as box office king, I can't see it happening.

The best case scenario is that it performs like The Bourne Supremacy. Like Dark Knight, that was a sequel to an adult film that was a solid hit in theaters, but it didn't open huge because people didn't expect it to be as good as it was. Additionally, Bourne rode its wave of good word of mouth to be a monster on DVD. Thus, we had a critically acclaimed sequel to a movie that critics and audiences all really liked, but didn't all discover at once.

For the sequel we had everyone who liked the first one going all at once to see the sequel over the opening weekend. Thus you had an almost doubling of the opening weekend from $29 million to $52 million (a 1.7x increase). If The Dark Knight follows a similar pattern, as it has thus far, we could see a near doubling of its opening weekend, which would amount to about $86 million over three days. Plus the morbid curiosity factor and the geek factor could theoretically put it over $100 million. But it won't happen like that. There is one huge strike against it even coming close to that comparison or any other records of note: kids.

Ironically, considering the release and fall out of Batman Returns (I know, I seem to bring that up every season for one reason or another), the very marketing campaign that is building such buzz for The Dark Knight is the very thing that will prevent it from reaching any record heights.

First of all, a quick digression, the ad campaign is built around fans of the mythology as opposed to casual observers. No one in either trailer ever calls The Joker by his nickname. And nowhere are we told just who Harvey Dent is, like the fact that is he the new district attorney. So far, the two trailers feel like inside baseball. But that's a minor issue (easily rectified in June) compared to the big problem.

The entire ad campaign (trailers and posters) is basically daring parents to bring children. It's all about darkness, fear, despair, failure, and mass death. For reasons right or wrong, parents felt comfortable bringing their kids to Pirates 2 or Iron Man. I can't imagine most parents of a seven or eight year old not thinking twice before bringing their son or daughter to watch a most terrifying Joker as he blows up hospitals, slaughters police officers, drops women out of windows, and basically does his best to give your kids nightmares (and that's just what the trailers reveal).

It's the Achilles heel that will prevent The Dark Knight from opening as high as Iron Man or Indiana Jones 4. Heck, even The Incredible Hulk looks more colorful and less frightening. R-rating not withstanding, The Matrix Reloaded was basically sold as harmless sci-fi kung-fu. From a protective parent's viewpoint, I'd imagine The Dark Knight basically looks like a horror film that happens to feature well known comic book characters.

And that may be a great thing for adults and action fans and geeks. And as a hardcore Batman fan, there's an outside shot that it could be my new favorite movie ever. But in order to set records, you need to at least trick families into thinking that your movie is appropriate. The marketeers have spent the last several months doing just the opposite. And it will most certainly cost them a shot at the title. But, gosh, I'd love to be proven wrong.

Scott Mendelson