Early signals: Pittsburgh theaters anticipate Batmania

Julia Kovacs is doubling the staff at Rave Motion Pictures Pittsburgh North to 10 employees and three managers for the next few days.

She ordered an extra week's worth of concession supplies just for this weekend, when “The Dark Knight Rises” sweeps into theaters and fills Western Pennsylvania movie houses with fans eager to see Pittsburgh on the big screen.

“This potentially could be the biggest weekend of the year,” said Kovacs, general manager of the McCandless theater, which will show the latest Batman flick on four of its 11 screens for 20 showings a day. “These are the days we live for.”

Director Christopher Nolan's third and final Batman installment could be one of the blockbusters of the year, especially in Pittsburgh, which hosted weeks of high-profile filming last summer.

“To see how Pittsburgh is transformed into Gotham is drawing a lot of attention,” said David Huffman, marketing director for Cleveland Cinemas, parent company of SouthSide Works Cinema. The theater expects to sell all 200 tickets for a screening of the trilogy starting Thursday evening and will have midnight showings of “Dark Knight Rises” on six of its 10 screens.

“That's a record for us,” Huffman said, who noted several already had sold out.

The Byham Theater had all the look of Hollywood on Tuesday as extras, grips and other crew members — some pulling up in limousines —arrived at a special “red carpet” screening.

Tori Musial, 22, of Pleasant Hills worked as a costume production assistant on the film, including on the day producers filmed a climactic explosion scene at Heinz Field.

“It's exciting to see it all come together,” she said.

Also attending were Gov. Tom Corbett, Pittsburgh Mayor Luke Ravenstahl and several Pittsburgh Steelers, including Max Starks and Greg Warren.

Retired Steelers wide receiver Hines Ward, who also turned out for the screening, is famously pictured in movie trailers outrunning a series of explosions on the field.

“One blew up like 15 yards away from me,” he said. “I had on earplugs, but you could feel it. I was screaming all the way through, and just trying not to fall.”

“To be able to take Batman and Pittsburgh and put them together … it has been a really big deal,” executive producer Thomas Tull, part-owner of the Steelers, said outside the theater.

The media were not permitted to attend the screening.

Theater owners looking to bounce back from a rough 2011 hope the blockbuster will fill seats and bellies.

“We definitely want to get butts in seats, but we want them to stop by the concession stand on the way,” Kovacs said.

At $7 per adult, ticket sales could approach $60,000 a day at Rave. But most of that would go back to Warner Bros. and the distributor, Kovacs said. It's the fountain drinks, popcorn and candy sales that she is most interested in.

“For the first couple of weeks, we don't make a penny except for concessions,” she said.

A recent analysis by Chicago-based investment research firm Morningstar showed that about 85 cents of each dollar spent on concessions is profit for theaters, which in turn use that money to pay for rent, utilities and employee salaries.

“Dark Knight” should continue a solid year for 2012, which had blockbusters such as “The Hunger Games” and “The Avengers,” which set an opening-weekend sales record of $207 million, said Patrick Corcoran of Washington-based National Association of Theater Owners. He blamed last year's sales drop of 3.8 percent to $10.2 billion and attendance decrease of 4.2 percent to 1.3 billion people on a lack of quality movies out of Hollywood.

“If the movies are there, people will come,” said Corcoran, who noted attendance is up 6 percent this year.

That is important, he said, because “when you have blockbusters, you have more people buying concessions.”

Nolan's first two Batman installments — “Batman Begins” in 2005 and “The Dark Knight” in 2008 — earned $1.3 billion worldwide.

James Meredith, a spokesman for Texas-based Cinemark Theatres, declined to speculate how much “Dark Knight” might draw.

“It's just tough to say, but “The Dark Knight Rises” is going to be a big one,” he said.

Cinemark's website showed its theaters in Robinson, Center and Tarentum by Tuesday had sold out 11 opening-night screenings.

AMC Loews Waterfront sold out more than a dozen midnight screenings and its IMAX trilogy screening, its website showed.

AMC's previous record for a movie-marathon screening was 30,000 advance tickets sold nationwide before “The Avengers” release in May, company spokesman Ryan Noonan said.

More than 60,000 advance tickets have been sold for the Batman trilogy.

“That's just one of the indicators we have for how much people are looking forward to this film,” he said.

The Carnegie Science Center is screening a major blockbuster in its Omnimax theater for the first time since a 2005 Harry Potter film. It sold all 325 tickets for its “Dark Knight” midnight screening within hours after they went on sale June 11, said spokeswoman Candace Latshaw. Two showings on Friday also are sold out.

“We've gotten a great response,” Latshaw said. “You can tell Pittsburghers are excited.”

Jason Cato is a staff writer for Trib Total Media. He can be reached at 412-320-7936 or jcato@tribweb.com.