The $150 million production marks the first Batman movie to bow on a Wednesday compared to the Friday June launches of the previous four. Its $72.9 million five-day gross tops Batman Forever's $66.3 million from 1995 as a franchise high but trails by 25 percent in terms of the number of tickets sold (due to ticket price inflation). Batman Begins' grosses include a simultaneous IMAX release, which broke the five-day opening record with an estimated $3.16 million at 55 venues.

"I think people love the character, and it's been eight years since the franchise unfortunately took a negative turn [with Batman and Robin]," Warner Bros.' head of distribution Dan Fellman told Box Office Mojo. "It took the vision of a filmmaker like Christopher Nolan to bring it back, with a great script and cast. We're well positioned moving forward with the summer. We're going to have a first week of $85 million, and [Batman and Robin] had $59 million. That's enough to bring Batman back for a sequel."
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Moviegoers polled by CinemaScore gave Batman Begins an "A," while Fellman said it was rated the best of all the Batman movies in Warner Bros.' exit polling. The studio's surveys further indicated that 57 percent of moviegoers were male and 54 percent were over the age of 25. While stats like these are encouraging, they don't necessarily assure lasting appeal, as the makers of the fizzling Cinderella Man can attest after that picture's high audience marks, and Batman Begins, with its super-saturation release, is generally the kind of movie people rush to see, not discover down the road.
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Banking on a public perception of quality and indirect competition from next weekend's Herbie: Fully Loaded, Bewitched and Land of the Dead, Batman Begins hopes to defy current trends with a strong hold in its second weekend.

On the subject of CINDERELLA MAN and its inexplicable divebomb trajectory, I wonder how much of an impact Russell Crowe's infamous phone-throwing incident after the film's first weekend had on its lack-of-legs.  Jeffrey Wells postulates this as a key component in the collapse of a film that otherwise had everything going in its pedigreed favor. 

Maybe as long as Christian Bale doesn't lob any sort of communication device at anyone over the course of the next week, the movie is safe... :-)

In the rare Hollywood film where the hero doesn't kill the villian and contains no sexual overtones. We still have the distant voices claiming that the movie wasn't kid friendly. Kids love ninjas. I know I did as a kid.

I hope the Bat-franchise goes big boffo bucks.  I'll see every film, and I think Bale did a great job.

But I wish to god the movie was kid-friendly.  Say what you want about the Batman TV show, but I was a kid back then, and I thought Batman was cool.  The show was silly, but I never thought Batman was -- and neither did my friends. 

This Batman movie is not intended for kids at all -- and I have to ask where tomorrow's fans are coming from.  We don't need to make stupid, cheesy movies to appeal to kids.  I think of Batman: TAS, The Iron Giant, The Incredibles, as good stories that hold on to the flavor of the comics and still appeal to kids.  So did the first couple of Superman movies.  I also dug The Rocketeer and a lot of other movies -- too many to mention here.

I don't prefer the Joel Shumacher Bat-movies to the latest one.  In fact, I think this is a great movie.  It's just not the way I would go if I were making the decisions. 

My hope is that this is so wildly successful that someone out there will make a good superhero movie that would appeal to movie goers of all ages.  It's been shown time and again that the movies that consistently make the most money are the ones that everyone can watch.   

And finally, please don't lecture me on tone...I believe that my point was made and I didn't attack anyone.

Edited to fix stoopid typo.

Theres pretty much nothing for kids nowadays unless it's the cotton candy PBS crap.

Okay...I'll play along. 

Where are the comics fans of tomorrow going to come from, if we don't get them now? 

If you don't like my picks for kid-friendly movies, that's great.  But the queston remains. 

It's not a kid's movie, but there are movies I would worry about a kid watching a whole lot more than this one.