Head explodes

[sombrefan]

Dear Universal Pictures,

Next time pull your finger out when Joss announces about the new Serenity screenings. Here's a radical idea actually have the update on the Can't Stop The Beat Signal site as soon as he announces the news. Are you pleased that so many fans spent hours digging through online movie ticket sites to try and work which cities would have the screenings? Or were you desperate to see how the fandom operated? Be grateful I am not American, otherwise I would wring your bloody neck.

Yours,

Simon

Comments

[thepouncer.livejournal.com]

This was insane. I even called a friend that works close to the DC showing to see if she could go by the box office and buy tickets directly. By the time I found out about it, DC was sold out.

[simonf.livejournal.com]

Very insane. Never seen anything like it. Over 350 comments in one thread at Whedonesque devoted to getting the tickets. We crashed, fireflyfans.net crashed, even the official movie site crashed at one point. And now I'm hearing rumours the release date may be moved forward. Anyhow I hope you to get see it on May 26th some how :).

[grnarmadillo.livejournal.com]

Maybe this is their way of trying to take out any sites (including their own boards) that carry spoilers? j/k

Seriously, I wonder what they're thinking here. Not that I mind being able to see Serenity twice before it comes out, but having this many "preview" screenings seems to run a risk of hurting the opening weekend revenues. They win if each of us seeing the previews converts more to the cause, but it would seem that they lose if us hardcore fans don't feel as desperate of a need to go on opening weekend. For a traditional opening weekend, I might, for example, go with my girlfriend, thus bringing in one ticket fare that they wouldn't have otherwise gotten, but that's a lot harder when there are only a few sold out screenings.

Unless they're planning to try a truly radical experiment of going for 10-20 sold-out screenings every few weeks for six months up to the launch instead of a big opening weekend. It's crazy, but there's this "in club" feeling that we're getting something special (and sold-out) that might make these previews more desireable. They're even emphasizing that this is a sort of an in-crowd by having a "I've seen Serenity" topic on the official boards, when one would figure that usually a movie company would NOT want vast discussions of spoilers on their own boards months before release. And, by (in my view) overemphasizing how it's an unfinished cut (didn't look that unfinished to me), they're telling us we need to go again in September for the finished product. The original Star Wars made it big without a huge opening weekend. That'd be a heck of a gamble, but it just might work....

[wondersheep.livejournal.com]

Sooo... I'm guessing I'm not going to see it again on the 26th?

Damn.

Oh well, can't sleep, reavers will eat me.

(p.s. that thing I said I was going to mail today? Delayed due to severe weather.)