'Batman' Premiere in Paris Canceled After Colorado Shooting After a fatal mass shooting early Friday left 12 dead and 40 wounded in suburban Denver at a screening of The Dark Knight Rises, promotional activities for the film in France have been suspended. The red carpet will not roll out Friday evening on the Champs-Élysées, where the latest installment in the Batman franchise was due to premiere in Paris. Warner Bros., the studio behind the movie, quickly canceled a press junket scheduled for Friday morning at the luxury Bristol hotel, steps from the Élysée Palace - even while cast members prepared for interview sessions and dozens of film critics waited their turn - as word spread of the multiplex massacre some 5,000 miles away. The Colorado killings took place shortly before 9 a.m. Paris time. The film, featuring France's own Marion Cotillard, among other cast members, is due to open on 900 French screens Wednesday. On an otherwise quiet summer Friday in France, coverage of the killings has dominated the media, heading top news sites throughout the day and leading 24-hour-news-channel loops. In the afternoon a crew was shown dismantling the premiere setup on the vast sidewalk in front of the Gaumont Champs-Élysées Marignan cinema. The TF1 TV network told Agence France-Presse that a late-morning taping of interviews with Cotillard and Morgan Freeman, scheduled to appear on the national 8 p.m. newscast just as the premiere was scheduled to begin, had also been canceled. Fellow stars Christian Bale and Anne Hathaway and director Christopher Nolan, all expected this evening on the "most beautiful avenue in the world" for the superhero blockbuster's French debut, were also reportedly waiting in the wings at the Bristol as reporters were asked to leave. Workers disassemble an entrance archway in the shape of a Batman mask in front of a Paris movie theatre Friday. Steph / Visual-ZUMA Press On an otherwise quiet summer Friday in France, coverage of the killings has dominated the media, heading top news sites throughout the day and leading 24-hour news channel loops. "We waited an hour and 45 minutes," Sophie Grassin, a film critic for Le Nouvel Observateur present at the Bristol, told the French weekly's website. Then, around 11:30 a.m., we saw Marion Cotillard arrive, made up, well dressed. The Warner folks led her into a room where they evidently told her the terrible news. The Warner team was in tears.