Strange days folks.
Warner Brothers has announced an… interesting new venture that will see them releasing a million tickets for their day-early release of Man Of Steel for sale exclusively at Wal-Mart.
The passes will allow you to see a 2d or 3D screening of the film on June 13th, as well as offer a chance to pre-order the Blu-ray or HD stream of the film with some exclusive content and a comic book from David Goyer.
Granted, other outlets will be able to sell advance passes a few days later, but it’s Wal-Mart that’s getting the sweet deal, a huge drop on the actual sales, and the opportunity to cross-promote with the film first. It’s a clever, unique move from WB, a novel way to reinforce Man of Steel as a huge event film and have it promoted heavily in front of approximately a gajillion consumers before release. It also jump starts home video sales and ties in the act of seeing the film with the act of buying- an adorable hail-mary on the declining disc market…
Expect this kind of thing to continue if it takes off (it will).
You can read more about the plan at Variety, and hear what the WB execs have to say about it.