'Dark Knight Rises' Box Office Numbers Released Despite Promise Not To Report

The day after the shooting in Aurora, Colorado, studios and box office tracking agencies alike agreed that no box office data would be released over the weekend out of respect for the victims of the tragedy. Well, that didn't quite hold up: The New York Times got some official numbers for "The Dark Knight Rises," and they got them from Warner Bros. officials.

Perhaps it was worries about the stock market implications, or perhaps it was just because they were so excited, but these unnamed officials contacted the Times with official estimates for the weekend gross, pending Sunday's returns. So much for the moratorium, which up until this point had been held by all of the major studios, plus trackers like Rentrak.

It's probably because of the size of the number that WB wanted it out there as soon as possible: "The Dark Knight Rises" earned an estimated $160 million over the weekend, giving it the third highest-grossing first weekend ever behind "The Avengers" ($207.4 million) and "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows: Part 2" ($169 million).

What's especially impressive about these earnings is that they do not include any premium prices for 3D, as "The Dark Knight Rises" is a 2D-only movie. The film would have been boosted by IMAX sales, but those generally account for a much smaller percentage of grosses than 3D tickets do. If you only count 2D movies, "The Dark Knight Rises" has the biggest opening of all time.

The moratorium will be lifted tomorrow, and official numbers will be reported for all of the weekend's movies, as well as the actuals for "TDKR."