With more than a week to go before the highly-anticipated release of The Dark Knight, Fandango, the nation's leading moviegoer destination, reports that many of its pre-opening Thursday midnight shows on July 17 are already sold out in cities across the country, from New York to Boise, Idaho. Theaters continue to add 3:00 a.m. and 6:00 a.m. showtimes to meet the ticketing demand.

"The Dark Knight may be responsible for a lot of bleary eyes at work next Friday morning," says Rick Butler, Chief Operating Officer for Fandango. "We're seeing a record number of late-night showtimes selling out in advance, while theaters are adding new performances every day."

More than 1,500 late-night showtimes of the movie have been scheduled for the film's pre-opening on Thursday night (Friday morning), July 17-18, at Fandango.com/TheDarkKnight. An online survey of more than 3,000 The Dark Knight fans on Fandango.com last week resulted in the following information on the late-night surge:

- 37% of respondents plan to see the film at least once during one of the late night performances on Thursday night.
- 38% say that they intend to take off a few hours or the entire day
from work on Friday as a result of seeing the movie the night before.
- 60% of these moviegoers are male.
- 71% are under the age of 35.
- 39% plan to see the film in IMAX(R).
- 92% expect that the Academy will recognize Heath Ledger's performance as The Joker with a posthumous Oscar(R) nomination next year.

For Fandango, The Dark Knight is poised to be the year's top advance ticket-seller in wide release, outpacing Iron Man, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull and Sex and the City: The Movie at the same point in those films' sales cycles.

The Dark Knight was released July 18th, 2008 and stars Christian Bale, Heath Ledger, Aaron Eckhart, Michael Caine, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Gary Oldman, Morgan Freeman, Monique Gabriela Curnen. The film is directed by Christopher Nolan.