Los Angeles (dpa) – Batman, eat your heart out. The midnight release of The Hunger Games in the US raked in 19.5 million dollars in ticket sales Friday, the most ever for an original film, industry website Deadline.com reported. The huge take beat out the previous record set by The Dark Knight in 2008, even though the Batman film hit cinemas at the height of the summer when balmy conditions increase the number of viewers at late night films. The report said that the huge worldwide roll-out saw the dystopian teen sci-fi pic screened at some 7,700 midnight showings, and that international revenues were as spectacular as those seen in the US. Starring Jennifer Lawrence, The Hunger Games has been widely tipped to become the biggest blockbuster of the year. Based on the best-selling novel of the same name by Suzanne Collins, it focuses on a heroine, Katniss Everdeen in a post-apocalyptic America where teenagers are forced to fight for survival in a giant reality TV game. BM ShortURL: http://goo.gl/OSMms Tags: Dark Knight, Hunger Games, Midnight, Record Section: Entertainment, Movies News