'Star Trek' 90%+ advance ticket share points to stellar entreprise (HWT)
By R. Kinsey Lowe
Advance ticket sales for "Star Trek" indicate J.J. Abrams' vigorous reboot of Paramount's venerable franchise is poised to go where no previous Enterprise has gone before at the box office, based on information provided by online ticket brokers MovieTickets.com and Fandango.com and Imax.
Updating figures cited in an earlier version of this story, MovieTickets reports an increase from 83% of ticket sales for "Star Trek" on Wednesday to 90% as of noon Thursday. Fandango also reports an increase, to 91% from 86% the day before.
With Fandango reporting comparable timeframe advance sales for "Trek" significantly outpacing "Wolverine" it seems fair to predict that the Abrams version's opening will easily rake in more than double the biggest debut among previous big-screen incarnations of Gene Rodenberry's creation - the $30.7 million taken in by "Star Trek: First Contact" back in November 1996, according to box office data from Hollywood Wiretap parent company Hollywood.com.
If the new movie performs as well opening weekend as the $85.1 million reported by Hollywood.com for "Wolverine: X-Men Origins," it will have grossed more in its first few days than the total theatrical tallies of all but two of the previous "Star Trek" films. According to Hollywood.com, "Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home" (1986) grossed altogether $109.7 million domestically and "Star Trek: First Contact" took in a total of a little more than $92 million.
Fandango notes that the new "Trek" is also outselling comparable pre-opening timeframes for the first "Transformers" movie in 2007 ($70.5 million opening weekend, per Hollywood.com) and for "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" ($100.1 million debut weekend, also per Hollywood.com).
Interestingly, many theaters including those with Imax auditoriums have scheduled multiple Thursday evening showtimes starting at 7 p.m. or even earlier, in addition to the customary 12:01 a.m. Friday screenings in high-grossing theaters.
Both online sellers report numerous sellout Thursday evening showings, particularly for giant-screen "Star Trek: The Imax Experience." MovieTickets is reporting that roughly 44% overall sales are for the Imax version, while the Imax share of tickets sold on Fandango is closer to 30%.
Individual Thursday Imax screenings have sold out at locations in Los Angeles (all three Thursday screenings sold out at the Bridge Cinema De Lux), Irvine (Calif.), New York City, Chicago, Dallas, Seattle, San Francisco, San Diego, Boston and Philadelphia. With 138 giant-screen installations sheduled to play the movie, Imax reported late Wednesday that 108 showtimes had sold out, raking in more than $2 million in presold tickets.
A late Wednesday scan of Los Angeles theaters on both MovieTickets and Fandango didn't initially show any soldout Thursday screenings at regular theaters, but clicking through to the Arclight Cinemas site revealed two Thursday sellouts and one on Friday evening, all three at the landmark Cinerama Dome around which the Hollywood Arclight complex is built. A look at online available seating charts for other Arclight auditoriums indicated those screenings were very nearly sold out for multiple Thursday shows., according to Arclight's web site.
