AP Essay: Will Anyone Really Miss the Box Office? A Warner Bros. executive emailed a fact sheet about "The Dark Knight Rises" to Hollywood reporters a few days ago and ended with two hopeful syllables for the film's box-office prospects: "Ka ching." Cash registers have indeed been ringing at theaters worldwide this weekend as millions shell out for the finale to Christopher Nolan's epic Batman trilogy. But the shootings that left 12 dead and 58 wounded at a "Dark Knight Rises" screening in Colorado on Friday have silenced the usual box-office crowing by studios to let the world know they've unleashed another blockbuster. Warner, the studio behind the Batman flicks, decided to hold off on releasing debut numbers for "The Dark Knight Rises" this weekend out of respect to the shooting victims and their families. Other studios followed suit, saying that like Warner, they would not issue their usual Sunday estimates, waiting instead until Monday, when they normally release final dollar counts for the weekend. It's an unusual show of harmony in a business where studios jostle and elbow one another for the right to proclaim in ads: "The No. 1 movie in America! This undated film image released by Warner Bros. Pictures shows Christian Bale as Batman in a scene from the action thriller "The Dark Knight Rises." (AP Photo/Warner Bros. Pictures, Ron Phillips) Close There's no doubt that "The Dark Knight Rises" will be the No. 1 film in America and beyond. Before Warner opted against weekend box-office reporting, the studio announced that the film took in $30.6 million domestically from shows that started just after midnight Friday, including the one in Aurora, Colo., where a gunman opened fire on an audience eager to be among the first to see the film. That was the second-best result ever for a midnight debut, trailing only Warner's "Harry Potter" finale with $43.5 million over the same weekend last summer. Trade papers Hollywood Reporter and Variety were projecting about $75 million for the film's full first day Friday, which could result in a three-day weekend haul of around $170 million, second only to last May's "The Avengers" at $207.4 million and ahead of the then-record $158.4 million for 2008's "The Dark Knight." But Hollywood's radio silence on box office this weekend leaves a curious void. No top-10 list for movie fans to mull over. No studio executives sharing audience age and gender breakdowns. No analysts slicing and dicing the numbers to determine if overall business was better than the same weekend's a year ago. No one reducing movies to the simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down judgment of whether they made too much or too little money. The question on this box-office-less weekend is: Will anyone really miss it? Sure, people like lists and rankings. Publishing has its best-seller lists, music has its pop charts, TV has its Nielsen ratings. Many movie fans have an idle curiosity to see how particular releases do, some holding off on deciding if they'll see a film until they know if it's a hit or a flop. Yet most people are either sold on seeing a film based on the marketing or they'll wait until trusted friends catch it and give it a recommendation or a raspberry. For books and music, the rankings simply say what's selling the best, and Nielsen ratings provide context on what share of the overall audience a show grabs. Hollywood box office is all about dollars, the numbers always climbing, the records always shooting higher. But box-office receipts provide only a narrow glimpse of show business.