DeadLine reports that WB is mad that instead of figureing out a way to put the DKR: Prologue in front of it’s film that came out this week Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows witch wasn’t shot in IMAX so they let Paramount put in front MI4. Turns out those IMAX numbers really helped MI4 while Sherlock didn’t fare so well
One bright spot is the new Mission: Impossible – Ghost Protocol which had the best major release per screen average all weekend helped by its higher IMAX ticket prices. It also opened with a huge $1.1 million playing on just 425 screens in 425 locations from Thursday evening through midnight shows. (As reference, M:I3 did $1.1M of midnight business on over 2,000 screens.) Wanna know why? Because it was goosed by none other than Warner Bros’ 6-minute The Dark Knight Rises preview on 40 of the 300 giant screen 70mm IMAX theaters. Paramount tells me that, because of strong early sales for midnight shows, IMAX asked to open Thursday evening to get the word of mouth started. Since Sherlock wasn’t booked into IMAX, Warner Bros couldn’t pair its ‘Batman 3′ prologue with its own product and lost a valuable marketing opportunity which went instead to Paramount on a silver platter. To say that Warner Bros was annoyed is an understatement. But there is a Dark Knight Rises teaser playing with Sherlock 2. The Tom Cruise-Jeremy Renner starrer directed by Brad Bird M:I4 expands this coming week — and then Hollywood will find out how the reformulated franchise fares on its own.
