Tag Archives: Fandango

Fandango To Donate “Karate Kid” Ticket Revenue To Starlight

Starlight Logo.jpgNorth America’s largest movie ticket website is feeling quite charitable lately. In fact, over the next two weeks (June 7th through June 20th) Fandango will be donating $1 to the Starlight Children’s Foundation for every ticket they sell to “The Karate Kid” which is being released today by Sony Pictures in the U.S. and Canada.

The partnership seems rather complimentary given that Starlight’s whole mission of aiding critically ill children and their families revolves around entertainment. The 25-year-old charity uses entertainment as a distraction from the pain, depression, fear and isolation a child may experience during an illness. The organization presently has more than three million family members in their network.

A single dollar may not seem like much, but according to the press release published to announce the program Starlight manages to stretch a dollar quite far:

  • $1 enables a child with cancer to play Starlight’s Fun Center video games for almost an entire day while going through chemo therapy
  • $1 enables a teen who is too sick to leave home to spend a day finding supportive friends on Starlight’s Starbirght World
  • $1 helps a family get away from hospital treatments to have fun for a day at a Starlight Great Escapes event

Over the last five days “The Karate Kid” has accounted for 52% of Fandango’s ticket sales and the film continues to outpace the sales of this weekend’s other new releases.

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Popularity: 10% [?]

“Dark Knight” Pulls An All Nighter

“The Dark Knight”North American exhibitors plan on putting the old theory about the early bird catching the worm to the test when Warner Bros. “The Dark Knight” opens on June 19th. Truthfully though they are less after invertebrates and more after the additional box office generated by a few early morning screenings of the big budget sequel to “Batman Begins”.

How early, you may be asking yourself. Well, the New York Times is reporting that tickets to midnight screenings of the highly anticipated tent pole movie sold out so quickly that theatre owners in large metropolitan markets (and even a few small ones) began selling tickets to showings at 3 and 6 a.m. Fandango.com, the online ticketing web site, has counted over 1,500 such showings. What’s even more remarkable is those early morning screenings were also quickly sold out.

Midnight screenings of blockbuster movies are nothing new. Theatre owners have been holding them for years, especially for sequels to successful franchise films. “Batman Begins” pulled in USD $200 million at the North American box office when it was originally released in 2005 with an opening weekend of USD $49 million. Presumably, with director Christopher Nolan and star Christian Bale both returning for the second film, that amount will be shattered by “Dark Knight’s” opening.

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Popularity: 15% [?]