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I hate to say this guys, but this is a fairly common occurrence at movie theaters across the country. Basically, the theater is trying to offset their rental costs for films that may not be living up to expectations, or they simply do not want to pay the higher rental fee for bigger films so they transfer those funds to films with a lower rental cost.

There was massive evidence of this during the run of Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Theaters did not want to pay out the very high costs for playing Star Wars on their screens (for the first three weeks of it’s run George Lucas and Fox kept some 80% of all box office receipts) so to offset this they would charge the tickets to another film. Quite often a patron of Star Wars would be surprised to find their tickets say “Austin Powers: The Spy Who Shagged Me” or “The Mummy”. This way the theater got to keep more of their profits.

It happens all the time during major releases, and I’m quite sure it has happened to everyone on this board at some time but they simply didn’t look at their ticket. To be honest I will no longer go to AMC Theaters due to this practice (they are probably the worst offenders in this regard), during the summer of 99 I went to Star Wars a few times, and every time I went to an AMC theater I was given a ticket to another film… so I only go to Harkins Theatres now (and frankly they give a much better audio/video presentation than AMC).

So if you run into this issue just go up to the ticket counter and demand you be given the proper ticket. Most of the time they will try to blow you off and tell you that it doesn’t matter, but be insistent.

Yancy

Thanks for the clarification. I always check the tickets to make sure they have the right movie name on them, but not for this reason. I don't recall ever getting tickets to the wrong movie, but I just like to make sure while I am still at the window that there hasn't been a mistake. But I can believe that what you have described does happen.

So maybe it was for commercial reasons, although unethical. I thought perhaps it was one theater manager's personal protest against "The Passion".

I am surprised that I haven't heard about this practice before. It would seem like movie producers or marketers would be taking theater chains to court over this practice.