Recently it was reported that just like Solo: A Star Wars Story, The Rise Of Skywalker was breaking ticket presale records.  So you’ve undoubtedly been seeing an avalanche of media reports like this:

But here’s how the media is distorting the facts in order to fabricate this narrative.

First, it should be noted that every article I looked at, cited Atom.com rather than Fandango.  As far as I know, as of this writing Fandango has not made any announcement anywhere.  I will update this blog post if they are found.  So he fact of the matter is, that TROS may not even be breaking any records at all.  This may just be a sign of Atom.com’s growing popularity as a relatively new service.

But there’s more.

SC Reviews pointed me to this image:

So Atom was offering a collectible incentive to purchase a ticket through them.  And there’s even more.

Apparently, Avengers Endgame crashed the AMC theaters site when it opened up sales.  USA Today reports:

‘Avengers: Endgame’ tickets presale crashes AMC Theatres site, creates long Fandango waits

Looking to score tickets to the hotly anticipated “Avengers: Endgame”? Get in line.

Just as presale ticket sales for the next Marvel Studios film went online Tuesday morning, sales just as quickly seemed to have gone offline. The rush of activity took down the AMC Theatres site and app, left fans with over hour-long waits at ticketing site Fandango, and also caused issues with the Regal Cinemas and Atom Tickets apps.

Fandango was still showing wait times of over an hour to purchase tickets as of 10:30 a.m. ET Tuesday, while the AMC website and app continued to have issues. Atom Tickets were loading, but the site was still alerting to errors when trying to purchase tickets.

 

Which would then mean, that The Rise Of Skywalker purportedly broke a pre-sales record while competing against a movie, for which the ticket sales were disabled for the first hour.

But wait, there’s even more!

When the Fandango reports do roll in, keep the following in mind.

Gamestop is offering a $15 Fandango movie ticket, with the pre-order of Jedi: Fallen Order.

Pro Tip:  Thankfully this movie ticket does not seem to be tied exclusively to The Rise Of Skywalker, so people who take advantage of this offer can see any other movie.

After the above was published, we saw the following news:

But those of us who were following the events shortly before the release of Solo in May 2018, remember this similar reporting:

So knowing what we know from the Solo fiasco, we should now be watching the online seating charts in our local theaters.  If, like Solo, there are a lot of empty seats, then we may be looking at a box office replay.

Thanks to LazarusDark, Critical Equation,&  Club Star Wars  for the tips.

Originally published here & here.