Opening a three hour movie on a Wednesday night that wasn’t a holiday appears to have been a serious boner (you know, like a mixup or a SNAFU) for Universal.
Honestly, I had no idea this was opening on a Wednesday. Did you? How long ago did you know? In all the advertising for this movie, they’ve never shouted “Opens Wednesday!!!!”
Sure, some movies open great on Wednesdays, but in every case I can recall, they shared these considerations:
1) The Wednesday was a holiday so they could go during the day, or Thursday was a holiday so people weren’t as concerned about staying up late due to work the next day.
2) There was a MAJOR, and I’m talking MAJOR media campaign geared towards getting the point across that it was opening in the middle of a week (OR hyping the exact date that it opened until we all had it memorized)
3) It wasn’t a three hour long movie that would have you going home at 10PM when you had to work the next day.
For King Kong, a very long movie to open on a Wednesday in mid-December without much publicity about the opening date, this has proved to be a catastrophe. Thursday, which wasn’t the opening day and was still a work day with a work day to go to on Friday, too, saw the ticket sales dip 35% from the opening day take.
Universal played this wrong. Whoever thought up opening this on a Wednesday was bananas. I still think that the weekend will prove fruitful for the big ape, but until then they’re going to have to live with sniping from the likes of Drudge and Roger Friedman (who doesn’t seem to think about any of the factors I raised and instead thinks that it’s just because Kong is not a kid’s movie. Ugh.)
Same thing nearly happened to me. My wife and I wanted to go see “Goblet of Fire” for her birthday on Wednesday. The nearest theater was nearly 30 miles away. Fortunately I checked playtimes and discovered that “Goblet” was bumped by “Kong” that day. Unfortunately that meant we had to drive another 15 miles to the next nearest movie theater to see “Goblet.” Oh well, the other town had much better Christmas lights downtown anyway.
You Said “The nearest theater was nearly 30 miles away”
Where the hell do you live?
Jerry, there are tons of places in this country where there isn’t a theater in a 30 mile radius…or even 60 miles! I should know, I’ve lived in enough of them. Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois…they have vast areas where there are little towns and it’s a good hour’s drive to get to anything entertaining.