The U.S. sales figures haven't come in yet, but the British debut for The Dark Knight was huge. The title sold more than 513,000 copies on the first day in the U.K. While this is not a record-breaker (the Brits apparently have a thing for ABBA, as Mamma Mia holds the one-day sales record), it's a strong debut.

But, I think the bigger story is Blu-ray accounting for 26% of the disc sales so far in the U.K.

If this trend holds up in the U.S., then this really is Blu-ray's big breakthrough. Up to this point, Blu-ray has been holding at about 9% of the market share, and some blockbuster titles surpassing 10%. But, I haven't seen anything even close to 20% market share, and The Dark Knight has gone way past that

http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/09122008/...-knight-0.html

Anecdotally, I ventured out to my local Best Buy because they were having a midnight release party with prize giveaways and even a Batsignal lighting up the building. Little did I realize that there would be about 200 people in line at that hour! And I had to freeze my butt outside while they let people into the store 20 at a time. But, I got my Blu-ray copy and it looks good (didn't win anything though!).

Just from what I saw at that store, it looked like close to one-third of the purchases were Blu-ray, and I was the only person among the groups around me that bought "only" one copy of the movie.