When Marvel first announced its plans to make a Guardians Of The Galaxy movie, there were some fears that the general public might be too unfamiliar with the lesser known comic book property to show up in the crazy numbers needed to turn a profit. Based on early buzz and pre-ticket sales, it seems a ton of people fought through the confusion and got on board. Unfortunately, that doesn’t mean there weren’t still a few minor confusion problems, as evidenced by one theater that mistakenly showed Rise Of The Guardians instead.
That’s right. According to Kotaku, one theater in New Jersey swapped out the James Gunn superhero movie that debuted yesterday with the underwhelming, two-year-old DreamWorks Animation flick. Not surprisingly, people in the theater were less than thrilled.
Check out this poor girl’s mood rise and fall based on her tweets…
So, what the hell could have possibly happened? Well, in the time since this story has gone viral, many projectionists and theater works have spoken up. Apparently, Rise Of The Guardians has been shown recently as part of some children’s matinee clubs. More than likely, someone labeled the digital file in the hard drive as "Guardians". Then, whoever was cueing up the movie saw Guardians already listed and never bothered uploading the right movie into the system. As a result, when there became a clear problem, there wasn’t an easy solution to fix it, especially since the other midnight screenings were likely full.
It sounds like a comedy of errors too strange and random to believe, but this exact same problem actually happened in Richmond, Virginia too. Check out this guy’s very familiar tweet…
Long story short, this is a great reminder to everyone working in the theater industry that it’s always worth taking a few minutes to double check. When people go to see movies, they tend to be very passionate and invested, especially on opening weekend. No one wants the bad energy and bad press associated with not giving them what they want. In this case, what they missed was pretty damn good too.
