Disney Accused of FAKING The Rise of Skywalker Ticket Sales?! - Star Wars: Episode IX - The Rise of Skywalker (2019) Discussion

[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

Here you go again... just like your out of left field crackpot theory that Disney bought tickets to Captain Marvel, right? No substance, no proof, nothing but your hunch, but good enough to run with.

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[–] darkpast (8322) 5 years ago

you realize SW fans are dedicated and crazy, having great early presales is normal

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

You know, I saw a similar placement in my local theater - at every show time about 6 of the very first seats (where no one buys) were sold. Some of the later times had no seats sold but those ones. Never seen that before.

And no, I didn't buy a seat btw.

Edit: Here's the full image with the times - i.lensdump.com/i/iSKqHz.jpg

I'm not one for conspiracies, but tell me that is not suspicious. NO one usually buys those front row seats like that, and now every showing has those specifically sold?

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

I looked through my local showings, and nearly all of them had all the good seats taken, but very few had the front row seats taken.

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

I've never seen the front row seats reserved like that, nonetheless so consistently for every showing.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

Well, I'm not seeing it anywhere I look. Every theater I look at in the San Francisco Bay Area has what I expect to see-- most good seats gone, front row seats still available. Could it be the theaters in your area have blacked those out, or reserved them for something? Or, could there be some kind of ticket-scalping bot that is programmed to buy seats to later resell at a profit that has been incorrectly programmed? It seems utterly beyond belief that Disney would risk so much just to buy 6 seats to a few dozen showings of the film. They stand to gain nothing from that, but can lose so much. This all sounds to me like when I hear people say "George Bush orchestrated 9/11." It's preposterous for so many reasons.

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

I'm open to it being some other explanation, but another poster just saw a similar thing in their own theater - beyond what's in the OP. So who knows how widespread it is. Based on the amount of seats not purchased in those later times, it seems highly unlikely that it would be a ticket scalper - they'd certainly be losing a lot of money because no one is going to buy them. I'm not going to rule that out though, just like I'm not going to rule out this other theory yet.

If you are able to pump up the first hour pre-orders by buying some of these seats, you're going to get the headlines - you're going to raise public awareness and ultimately sell more tickets. You have to start building this narrative quickly, because if it wasn't "record breaking", you're immediately deflating the hype and sales of the film. You spend money to make money in business, it's basic stuff.

The motive is there, but there are other variables to consider - like how easy or difficult it would it be for us to uncover that this is actually what happened. If we were able to really prove they bought these seats, it would likely be a scandal (depending on how it's reported by the mainstream). But I'm not sure if that's possible to prove.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

That's crazy! This makes so much sense...! Why else would these entries into incredibly popular blockbuster movie franchises sell a lot of tickets! The company that made them is buying the tickets!

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

Actually, it makes sense from a marketing point of view.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

Sure it does. Buy the tickets so people can't see your movie. Your costs go up, your revenue goes down.

This is called wishful thinking on your part. You've decided that Disney must be doing this, so therefore they are. Just like you decided they did it with Captain Marvel, even though they didn't.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

Your costs go up, your revenue goes down.

Nope.

Costs go up, that's right. But revenues go up too. You're getting headlines ("presales record!!!") and you're conveying that there's a high demand for this movie. People are more likely to watch successful movies.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

You don't work for a bank, do you?

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

You don't work for a bank, do you?

If you do, it seems that they hired you to fill some quota.

Now, elaborate, because your statement 'revenue goes down' doesn't make any sense. Perhaps you argue that self-bought seats can't be bought by customers, so that decreases the number of customers buying seats.

But that's non-sense: seats are not scarce. The bottleneck is not the offer of seats. The bottleneck is the amount of people that want to watch the movie.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

I'm arguing that if you have a number of seats to sell and you buy a percentage of those seats, you can't sell those seats to customers, so you lose money.

This is math.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

I'm arguing that if you have a number of seats to sell and you buy a percentage of those seats, you can't sell those seats to customers, so you lose money. This is math.

Dear god. I really hope you don't work for a bank, for their own sake.

That only applies if tickets were a scarce resource. But tickets are not scarce. Movie theaters are not gonna run out of tickets. The movie has a wide release: even if you can't get a ticket for one particular session, you'll have more theaters and more sessions and more days. The bottleneck is the amount of customers. That's the scarce resource and every movie runs out of customers eventually.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

First, you don't need to quote my whole post to me; I wrote it, I know about it.

Second, my point about buying the seats is that it is a seat a customer won't have at a screening. You spend money and lose a seat, especially on opening weekend when they would expect sell-outs. Buying that many seats would cause opening night houses to spread the word that the movie isn't popular, evaporating any hype they created. Hype is also not a scarce resource. Again: it's Star Wars.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

The film is going to sell out and make a fortune whether Disney buys tickets or not. All they do buy buying tickets is:

1. Reduce the amount of tickets available to the public
2. Increase their own costs
3. Risk being discovered and not only ridiculed, but probably brought up on criminal charges for defrauding the public and their shareholders

Absolutely no positive comes from buying their own tickets, and the idea that they would do so is ludicrous, and something only a tinfoil-hat-wearing conspiracy theorist would dream up in the first place.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

1. Reduce the amount of tickets available to the public
2. Increase their own costs
3. Risk being discovered

I answered already to that. The amount of tickets available to the public is not a scarce resource. The scarce resource is the amount of public wanting to watch the movie. If you increase the amount of customers, there'll be tickets. Perhaps they'll have to go to another movie theater, or another session, or go the following week, but movie theaters are not gonna run out of tickets.

The risk of being discovered is not a big issue. Mainstream media won't report it anyway.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

Mainstream media won't report it? This would be front-page news around the globe, and the Disney CEO would end up in jail were it ever discovered to be true.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

Mainstream media won't report it? This would be front-page news around the globe

LOL

Ok. You're a troll.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

There you go again-- unable to refute something so the person saying it must be a troll.

If Disney were defrauding their shareholders by overstating their revenue, the SEC would not turn a blind eye.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

Here you have a piece of news about one former Disney accountant that denounced that the company inflated the numbers.
https://boundingintocomics.com/2019/08/20/former-disney-accountant-sandra-kuba-claims-company-inflated-revenue-by-billions/

Now, look for that piece of news in mainstream media...

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

That story was all over the news. I saw it in my feed all day every day for a week.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

As for finding it in the mainstream media, a simple Google search shows articles about it from the New York Post, Forbes, Bloomberg, Fox, MSN, Variety, Daily Beast and more. You live in a fantasy world of your own making.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

Fox is not what I understand for 'mainstream media'. I'm obviously talking about all the media that present a clear and homogeneous ideological front. New York Post is hit and miss, sometimes it follows the Politically Correct Thought and sometimes it goes wild. It's more of a shapeshifter media.

So you have Forbes, Bloomberg, Variaty, yeap, those are clearly 'mainstream media'. It's true they published an article about it. Of course, CNN, zero references, Washington Post, zero references, New York Times, zero references, Huffington Post, zero references, and so.

In a nutshell: a few mainstream media outlets published one or two articles about the topic, most of mainstream media published zero, nada, nothing. In the modern flow of information, that's about nothing.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

Fox is the most-watched news network in the US. How is that not mainstream? How sure are you that the NYT, CNN, and so forth didn't also report on this? A quick Google search reveals pages of results from outlets on all sides of the political spectrum, but without digging through old issues of the NYT etc. from that time, I don't really know who reported what.

The point is that the story was all over the mainstream media, and who reported it, and how aggressively, is likely more a matter of how significant the story was and that news organizations's standards. The New York Times tends to have a higher standard than, say, Fox, for what is worth reporting, but I would not be surprised to find that the story was reported at the time.

Keep in mind that an unsubstantiated allegation by one person, and the story received what seems to have been ample coverage. The SEC is investigating what she said, and the real story will be if they find any merit to what she said.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

Fox is the most-watched news network in the US. How is that not mainstream?

By 'mainstream media' I'm using the term to refer to the extremely homogeneous media front that gathers 95% of current media and that gladly serves as a propaganda scheme for that SJW neo-religious cult. This is what I meant with that term. I already explained that.

You don't like using the term to name that concept? Fine, then propose a better efficient term.

The point is that the story was all over the mainstream media

Nope, the story was not 'all over the mainstream media'. There were one or two articles in a very small percentage of mainstream media outlets, that's it. If anyone doubts that, look for it in the main newspapers.

Of course, you had articles in pro-Trump media! but as a said, with 'mainstream media' I'm referring to the ideologically homogeneous and obedient SJW media front.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

I define mainstream as the news sources that the majority of people watch and read. Since Fox is the most-watched news channel, it's hard to imagine any word to describe other than mainstream.

I think the main issue I see is that you are expecting the New York Times, Fox, CNN, whoever else to make a major issue out of what is almost a non-story. A disgruntled former employee has made allegations that her former company overstated their earnings. She made her statement to the SEC, and until the SEC investigation is complete, the really isn't much of a story at all.

Back to the media issue-- the mainstream media is pretty divided in the US, but both sides have an equal voice in the mainstream, and the more far-out fringes, where you seem firmly planted, are less well-represented.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

I define mainstream as the news sources that the majority of people watch and read.

I don't care.

If you're discussing my statement, you should use the terms referring to the concept I have explicitly stated. If you think the term I used is not the right one for that concept, then you're free to propose your own term to name that concept and use it.

What you can't do is to inject your own definitions into other people's words and reinterpret them at your convenience. That's a type of straw-man fallacy, and it's dishonest debate.

I think the main issue I see is that you are expecting the New York Times, Fox, CNN, whoever else to make a major issue out of what is almost a non-story. A disgruntled former employee has made allegations that her former company overstated their earnings

Actually, a piece of news about allegations from a "disgruntled" former employee is more substantiated than 99% of mainstream media political news.

Anyway, you said that this was, literally, "all over the news", which contradicts what you just said here.

You can't say one thing and its opposite depending of the argument you're trying to make. Your whole comment is basically dishonest debate.

Not that I'm surprised.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

No, you can't arbitrarily redefine terms to suit your needs then say I'm using a straw-man argument when I point out your definition is incorrect. If you make a false statement like that, I can correct you.

And what I said was correct-- that story was all over the news for a few days, then it died down as no support for her allegations came forth. Now the story is in limbo while the SEC investigates.

In short, I pointed out that you were wrong and you are accusing me of debating dishonestly.

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

No, you can't arbitrarily redefine terms to suit your needs

If there's no term available to name the concept I'm talking about, I can reuse some term with a close meaning, provided I clearly define what I mean with that term.

If that's not possible, as you suggest, what you're doing in practice is ban the use of that concept in the talk. You can't talk about something if you're not allowed to use a word to name that something.

By the way, banning the use of words is a very common attitude among extremely religious people (somebody said Yahve?), so it's not unexpected to find that very same attitude among SJWs.

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[–] FilmBuff (6857) 5 years ago

I suppose SJWs would do that. I'm not an SJW, and I'm not doing that. I'm using the widespread, common definition of mainstream media to mean "traditional or established broadcasting or publishing outlets," while you are using it to mean "traditional or established broadcasting or publishing outlets that have a left-leaning stance."

How about this-- and I think I've suggested this before-- let's agree to disagree on this topic and figure out where we agree. Surely we have some common ground somewhere, don't we?

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[–] kuku (3510) 5 years ago

Sure! I don't take it personally. Dialectical fights are kind of relaxing for me XD

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

Dead-on, FilmBuff. Marketing makes people want to see the movie. If they bought their own tickets, they'd be making a product for a production cost, then buying their own product for additional cost, and then they can't sell those seats...

What...?

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

It's called building up hype to ultimately drum up more sales than what they lost by buying them. Spending money to make more money - simple business.

And if you saw the image I posted, the seats bought were undesirable - i.lensdump.com/i/iSKqHz.jpg

I'm not saying this is what's happening, but it is suspicious, and does make sense from a business perspective.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

That's what Star Wars needs: hype.

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

It does when the last Star Wars movie flopped big time and fan discontent is at an all-time high.

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

You can see the hype in terms of reactions, at conventions, online, all around. People still want to see them some Star Wars.

I know that the series is taking hits. They might be a bit worried, but I don't think they're buying up tickets. If they were, the film would be released to part-empty houses, which would kill word-of-mouth. "Oh, there were seats available. I don't think it's selling very well," and that would kill the hype. It's a bad strategy either way.

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

Look at the amount of dislikes on the trailer, the amount of views compared to the previously released ones, and the amount of critical comments coming in every minute - that was totally unheard of before TLJ. A Star Wars movie flopping was totally unheard of before TLJ.

There are entire communities dedicated to criticizing these films, entire Youtube careers have been launched from it. I lived through the prequel era and this is a totally different beast.

I'm not saying they're buying up tickets with certainty, but I can't deny that what I saw in my own local theater is very suspicious. I'll tell you what would kill the hype right away - if there weren't "record breaking" pre-orders. And the thing is, if you notice the actual headlines, it's "recording breaking pre-orders in the first hour."

I haven't looked into all the details beyond that, but padding out these first hour pre-sales is definitely a viable business move. Build up the hype that Star Wars is bigger than ever, push out the headlines into the public consciousness, and you're going to get more people in the theater.

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[–] TexasJack (12515) 5 years ago

There are entire communities dedicated to criticizing these films...

Sure are - https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

And what a glorious community it is.

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[–] TexasJack (12515) 5 years ago

They have some funny memes. I like this one

https://www.reddit.com/r/saltierthancrait/comments/dngrqt/the_star_wars_trilogies/?st=k28lbd5i&sh=286256e8

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[–] Ace_Spade (9458) 5 years ago

I suppose it could be a business move, but I don't think it's a good one.

I doubt headlines would run if they didn't break records with pre-sales. They would certainly run if presales were low.

There are, I think, a lot of people really hating on the new Star Wars, but I think that the internet is a different place. Those communities definitely existed for the prequels. I remember them then, too.

I certainly grant you that there's a different flavour to this particular virulence, but I think it's partly political.

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[–] Recognizer (386) 5 years ago

Wtf? I nearly laughed this off as conspiracy theory nonsense, but then I went and checked my local cinema ...

Rows D and H have exactly 8 seats allocated each IN EVERY SINGLE SESSION. In most cases, the same 8 seats or a minor variant thereof, with the split always being 4-2-2.

What is going on here?

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[–] maul (1540) 5 years ago

Yeah, I wouldn't have believed it if I hadn't seen it myself in my own local cinema - very suspicious indeed.

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[–] AdamS (336) 5 years ago

Lol.... Im quite sure Disney wont need to fake any ticket results.

Its Star Wars IX.... everyone who loves and (hopes/plans) to hate will see it.

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[–] Satan2016 (23989) 5 years ago

Disney filling theaters with clones! https://media.breitbart.com/media/2018/10/NPC-header-1-640x480.jpg

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[–] furiousstyles (4364) 5 years ago

Jesus H Christ , here you go again with your stupid agenda , why on earth would Disney buy tickets to one of the most popular movies this year ? Why didn’t they buy tickets for Solo as that was an embarrassment for Disney.

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