MAN OF STEEL’s First Day Record Was Rigged

Before DC fanboys charge the mighty fortifications of UTF’s San Francisco office (located right above Yangnyam Chicken authentic Korean fried wings, if you’re looking), allow me to declare my undying love for Zack Snyder’s MAN OF STEEL. While he honored the most revealing aspects of Kal-El’s journey, particularly his relationship with his adoptive parents, Snyder was also well aware of the need for a badass Superman flick, and he sure as hell delivered. And it was most definitely better than every Marvel movie ever created (sorry, I’m a Marvel fanatic myself).

But even with that said, I can’t help but realize that there’s a bit of a discrepancy between Man of Steel‘s record smashing weekend, and the actual amount of butts in the seat. For this release, Warner Bros. created a lucrative campaign alongside Wal-Mart for a special 7 pm showing on Thursday, which earned $12 million, while a separate the midnight showings earned $9 million. You’ll remember that day in particular was recorded to be the top grossing Thursday of all time. BUT… we’ve heard from several sources that Wal-Mart was unable to sell a massive amount of their screening tickets, and gave them away for free to their employees.

Here’s what a Wal-Mart employee on Reddit had to say about the matter:

I work at Walmart. The left over tickets were given out to associates or shredded. This means the whole showing was already bought out by the store. So no matter what Man of Steel was getting a full theater worth of money at 7pm.

So yeah like geekRAT said, it’s unfair to compare the two [Avengers and Man of Steel].

Even more folks, regular customers who aren’t employed by Wally World, have claimed that their showings were mostly unoccupied. So… were the Thursday stats artificially inflated? The movie was undoubtedly a success, but was it aided by Wal-Mart’s shady showings?

One of our own sources, who we encountered outside of the screening, revealed that her neighbor (an employee of Wal-Mart) gifted her a set of tickets.

There’s something fishy going on here, and it deserves to be discussed, but let’s not get too hasty. We don’t know how sinister of a plan this all is.

SOURCE: Reddit