Paramount makes literally thousands of dollars from World War Z's $50 tickets

Ok, so that doesn’t sound all that impressive, but “sources” have supplied Variety with some numbers for the premium offering from Paramount Pictures, and they do tell a tale.  The $50 dollar tickets included seeing the movie 2 days before the official release, a pair of custom 3D glasses, a limited edition poster, popcorn, and a copy of the Blu-ray, once it’s released.

Now, for some of those numbers.  Premium tickets were offered at only 5 theatres across the U.S., with 4 out of the 5 selling out, at an average head count of 250, and the other theatre coming in at 80%.  Variety’s math – and mine – puts that at a $60,000 slice in the current worldwide cumulative pie of $263,384,078 (boxofficemojo.com).

That’s not the kind of sample size you want to seriously present a thesis with, but nearly all of the offered seats were sold.  And at a very chunky 525% above the price of the average movie ticket in the U.S.  Conclusion?  At least some sort of market exists for package deal movie experiences, and that could be exploited explored in the same way as 3D and IMAX, by offering the public a super-sized product.

As recently prognosticated by George Lucas at a University of Southern California’s School of Cinematic Arts discussion panel:

You’re going to end up with fewer theaters, bigger theaters with a lot of nice things,” he forecast. “Going to the movies will cost 50 bucks or 100 or 150 bucks, like what Broadway costs today, or a football game. It’ll be an expensive thing. . . . (The movies) will sit in the theaters for a year, like a Broadway show does.

Just a blip on the radar, or sage prophecy from the lord of the star wars?

 

Last Updated: July 3, 2013