Could encouraging the media to blather on about opening-weekend numbers and midnight premieres -- like those for "The Dark Knight" -- be a mistake for Hollywood?

Industry expert David Weitzner thinks so. He called box office numbers the "iPhone of motion picture marketing."

In other words, they're over-hyped.

Heath Ledger's joker watches money burn in "The Dark Knight"

Weitzner, director of the summer program at the University of Southern California's School of Cinematic Arts, said the numbers obsession leads studio execs to sacrifice the integrity of the industry in a quest for box office chops.

"I think the industry made a huge mistake when it made media stars out of the studios and reported their grosses," he said.

Weitzner's words come in a week full of media content that focuses heavily on the box office returns of "The Dark Knight" in both regular theaters and in IMAX. But while Weitzner isn't contesting TDK's success, he doesn't think the media coverage of movies should be about numerical victories or defeats.

And he thinks the midnight premiere came about as a result of the industry's greed.

Weitzner has been in the marketing side of the film business for 48 years. He was responsible for the marketing efforts behind "ET" and the original "Star Wars" film.

When a film tops weekend box office scores, Weitzner said, it gives the winning studio something to crow about. But it also inevitably detracts from the runners up -- the third- and fourth- ranked films that failed to attract the largest number of weekend movie-goers.

The numbers portray what may be perfectly good films as box office losers before they actually have chances to be seen, Weitzner said.

And that's a lose-lose situation for the film industry.

"I think reporting grosses to the public is stupid," he said. "Nobody has any sense of the economics of this business. We send out really stupid signals. I think it's a dumb thing and I think it has cost us dearly."

Take "Meet Dave," the Eddie Murphy film that tanked earlier this month after a poor showing in its first-weekend box office returns.

"The Eddie Murphy film is an unmitigated disaster," Weitzner said. "But if the public didn't know that it was financially such a poor performer, they might go."

He argued the need for studios to top weekend box office numbers drives current film promotion trends. That, he says, is the strategy underlying the now-ubiquitous midnight premiere.

"The midnight show is there because you want to break someone's box office record," Weitzner said. "I'd love to tell you it's sophisticated marketing, but it's really all due to greed. Everyone wants to be number one in this business."

Of course, that's not to say that midnight showings don't make sense for films like "The Rocky Horror Picture Show." But, Weitzner said, cult films like "Rocky Horror" should be treated differently from summer blockbusters.

Midnight, he said, is the perfect time to show "Rocky Horror."

And Weitzner should know. While head of marketing at Fox, he was responsible for promoting the long-running film, which he inherited from his predecessor.

"It was phenomenal," he said. "They made a lot of money with that but it was a specialty film for that kind of an audience."

But what makes sense for a cult classic doesn't necessarily translate for the industry when it comes to midnight showings of mainstream movies.

In the latter case, Weitzner said, midnight premieres -- with attendant showings at 3 and 6 a.m. -- are all about packing more ticket sales into the same three-day period.

"It's the classic story of 'my film is bigger than yours,'" he said. "The only way I can do that is by giving myself the advantage of the extra midnight show."

SPI looked into the history of midnight premieres last week, with this post about the midnight premiere of "The Empire Strikes Back" at the Seattle International Film Festival in 1980.

Although Weitzner didn't work on the marketing for "Empire," he absolves the film's promoters of the "greed" charge -- which he said applies primarily to industry trends over the past five to six years.

With the popularity of "Star Wars," the studio's purpose for holding a midnight premiere of "Empire" was likely to create what Weitzner termed "a happening."

"If they did a midnight premiere it was to give it a festive atmosphere and to give it audience participation," he said. "That was done out of the fun of it."

So was the midnight premiere of "The Dark Knight" a manifestation of Hollywood's greed or a genuine "happening" meant in good fun?

Art Institute of Seattle student Kale Avery was the first in line at the Boeing IMAX Theater. He spent months looking through thrift stores to find the perfect Joker costume. Paul Comrie/Seattle P-I

Certainly, fans dressed up for TDK's midnight shows. Then again, the showing also helped the film's gross break a record previously held by Spiderman III.

Perhaps it was a little bit of both.