Half a year before it sees the inside of a cinema, the first midnight screenings of The Dark Knight Rises have sold out already...
Well, yikes.
We’re six months away from the release of Christopher Nolan’s final Batman movie, The Dark Knight Rises, and earlier this week, it was revealed that prebooking had opened for some IMAX midnight screenings of the film on its opening day (turns out that prebooking had been open for a few weeks, as it happens).
The film opens on July 20th in the US, and half a year ahead of its release, reports are already coming in that some of those midnight screenings have sold out. Thus far, it’s AMC IMAX screenings that have been put on sale, and already, it’s been revealed that one is absolutely full, with others following suit.
The New York midnight showing is already sold out, and EW is reporting that Los Angeles and San Francisco opening showings are expected to sell out any day. When that happens, expect more cinema chains to follow suit and open up bookings early.
Now granted, there’s hardly likely to be a shortage of cinemas showing The Dark Knight Rises over its opening weekend, and the movie industry will try and cram in everyone who wants to see the film.
But we wonder: are we seeing the beginning of a new trend here? Pre-ordering tickets is nothing new (we had an announcement earlier in the week that you can now book tickets for The Hunger Games in the US, for instance), but so far ahead of a movie’s release? That’s pretty much unheard of. What next? Queuing for returns at the box office? Expect Hollywood to be taking note, and wondering if it can somehow make this kind of thing the norm in the future.
When prebooking opens for the Police Academy remake, we’ll be sure to let you know. We'd hate you to miss out...
EW
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