Tom Cruise has been making a big deal out of the way “Digger” was filmed.
The Alejandro Innaritu directed satire opens Thursday in most locations, and wide on Friday.
The Oscar winning director filmed it in something called VistaVision, for the ultimate viewing experience.
There are only a few VistaVision equipped theaters in the country, however. There’s one in New York, one in Boston, in Los Angeles. And one in London.
So far, however, the unique situation of seeing “Digger” in 35mm has not penetrated the movie audience psyche.
In New York and Boston almost no tickets have been sold.
At New York’s Regal Theater in Union Square, seat maps are almost completely open in their RPX theater. For Thursday night’s first prime time show at 7:30pm, only four tickets have been sold. (Color me shocked.)
Up at Boston’s Coolidge Corner Theater, there’s no seat map, but you can purchase 40 tickets at a time — ten each in four categories — for every performance.
Ticketing is much better at Los Angeles’s The Grove, where most VistaVision showings are marked Almost Full. “Digger” will have a curious audience at least in Hollywood for a day or so.
Overall, though, ticket sales for “Digger” are softer than normal for a Tom Cruise movie.
At The Grove, for example, the regular IMAX shows are less than 50% sold so far, on Saturday, October 3rd.
Things are better in New York, at the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX. They’re not sold out, but close to it, starting Thursday night October 1st.
But Lincoln Square — the most popular movie theater in America — is an outlier because of its location on the Upper West Side.
Down at Union Square, where one of the theaters is VistaVision, there are loads of seats at all hours on all days.
Estimates now are for a $12-$15 million weekend.
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