Fahrenheit 9/11 is doing very well, even better than expected, and this film might have a good set of legs, possibly generating million-dollar-plus daily grosses for weeks to come.

The film opened in 868 theaters as the highest-grossing film, beating out the opening weekend of the Wayans Brothers’ film, White Chicks and the second weekend for DodgeBall and the Spielberg/Hanks film, The Terminal. In the first four days of its wide release, F-9/11 grossed $28 million, easily breaking the record for highest-grossing documentary that had been held by the nine-month release of Bowling for Columbine. The new film also broke record for per-screen grosses, pulling in about $9,000 per screen, even better than Spiderman 2 did on its opening weekend.

Even better news followed: F-9/11 held up well in the weekdays after the opening. Most films lose a huge chunk in those days, but Fahrenheit fell less than most films do, continuing to bring in between $3 million and $5 million per day during the week.

And more good news: Fahrenheit got a wider release, now in 1,725 theaters, and again, held up well for its second weekend, often a sign that the film will do well over time. It broke $50 million last Saturday, on its 8th day of wide release, and its second 4-day weekend gross was $22 million, just a 23% drop from the first. Compare that, for example, to the 50% drop for White Chicks.

The holiday weekend also helped F-9/11, with the revised Monday grosses ($5.75 million) besting Sunday’s, for a grand total of $61 million so far. Excellent news. The third and fourth weeks will be more telling as to this film’s longevity, though–and it may well have a good run, as there is great word-of-mouth, continuing controversy, and a lot of people who will be watching this film two, three, or even more times.

All of this is even despite the fact that the film faces a widely-reported (though not official) September DVD release, and is already available on the Internet for download. What’s more remarkable is that Michael Moore has stated publicly that he is perfectly fine with people downloading the film: “I don’t agree with the copyright laws and I don’t have a problem with people downloading the movie and sharing it with people as long as they’re not trying to make a profit off my labour. I would oppose that.” Even more remarkable is that lion’s Gate has also given a public-but-not-official OK for people to download the movie. That is unprecedented!

For those who want to see the online version, it can be found on Torrent (I recommend Shareaza for PC users, Limewire for Mac); the valid files are just over one gigabyte in size, in “.cue” format (you have to download a special program called VCD Gear to decompress), and it unzips into a folder containing two half-gigabyte MPEG files. The quality is fair, but too much of the sides are cropped out. Speaking for myself, I want to see it on the big screen first, and would use the downloaded version for reference after that while I see the film a second and third time at the cinema.

And now for the news the Japan crowd has been waiting for: I can’t tell you a release date for F-9/11 in Japan yet, but I can tell you that Gaga Communications will be announcing its Japan release date this weekend–I just called them to find out. I will be calling them again the day they make the announcement, and will post it here immediately, so stay tuned. If you want immediate news, get an RSS feed program (for Macs, NetNewsWire Lite is the best, IMHO); just enter “blogd.com,” or the Feed Address, or just look this site up under the program’s “Site Drawer” (I’m listed under “Weblogs A-F”).

The release date should be mid-August, perhaps around the 13th.