It was always going to be a big, big movie and it certainly didn’t disappoint, going to set a one-day box office record of $66.4 million on opening day, according to Warner’s head of distribution, Dan Fellman. No one, not even pirates are allowed to ruin this party.
Hindering piracy of the movie was always high on the list for Warner and it handed out night vision goggles in Australia in an attempt to thwart ‘cammers’ – people who record movies in theaters. In Australia ‘cammers’ are asked to leave if they are caught by theater staff, in the United States things are a little different.
According to reports, on Friday morning Eastglen 16 Theater employees grew suspicious that a man was recording, or ‘camming’ the “Dark Knight” movie. Following movie industry guidelines they called police at around 9:40pm, who arrived shortly after.
Lee’s Summit police confirmed that they found evidence that the 40-year-old man from Grandview, Mo. had recorded the movie so they arrested him. A few hours later the police went to the man’s house and conducted a search where they say they found pirate movies on DVD.
According to the MPAA, several other movies have been recorded at the Eastglen 16 theater, but at this stage it is not known if the man is affiliated with any particular group or was acting alone. Police have not released the name of the suspect.
Inevitably, and despite the best efforts of Warner, Rlslog reports that a copy of the movie has been leaked onto the Internet by a release group called “TradingStandards” who apparently ‘stole’ it from a P2P group called ‘DEViSE’ who actually ‘stole’ it from 2Bros – quite confusing. But anyway, by most accounts the quality is pretty poor and not worth bothering with at all, so Warner will be happy.
Considering the popularity of the movie, maybe this time it just has to be the big screen.
