Its not unfamiliar for a studio, a producer or even a star to 'stock' an opening by paying for people to attend an opening weekend. And if their movie really sucks, they can claim that people bought tickets to other movies but really went into their movie but were trying to dampen the numbers by buying the wrong tickets (hello, Spike Lee).
That was my first thought also. Would have been interesting to see the crowd coming out.
Lots of gays in the DFW area. Enough to buy a full section ad in the Dallas Morning News. This so-called conservative newspaper is very soft on gays.