SHORTLY BEFORE IRON MAN 3 OPENS, A BIT OF A SNAG...

The much-anticpated IRON MAN 3 is barely a week away and as fans' eagerness builds, an unexpected and irritating kerfluffle is taking place. As explained in detail at Slashfilm, Disney, the power behind IRON MAN 3 and Marvel Studios, is putting the squeeze of the AMC and Regal theater chains in an effort to garner a larger percentage of the box office take from their films, so the theater chains are retaliating by halting sale of tickets for the film at their locations nationwide. As far as I'm personally concerned, Disney can go fuck themselves in the ear since this kind of move screws the people who pay their hard-earned cash to see their movies in the first place, and really, how much more money does that corporation really need? It's a naked cash-grab, no more, no less, and while I'm sure it'll all be worked out before opening day, it shows a real contempt for and/or  lack of giving a squirt of rat's piss about the very people who keep the corporate coffers overflowing.

As you may or may not know, I'm the cruise director for my crew of moviegoing friends — the Cine-Miscreants — whenever assorted genre movies open, so it's on me to figure out when and where to see movies on opening night. In the case of IRON MAN 3, I'd been wondering why the fuck the online ticket sources for NYC have still not made tickets available, especially since I'm trying to sort out the issue in regard to both opening night and the four-film Iron Man marathon the day before. While trying to figure out the problem, I stumbled across the Slashfilm article and I was rather annoyed.  Manhattan's choices of decent screens are already limited but this situation screws the audience even further. My crew was looking forward to seeing it at the Regal Union Square multiplex since it won't be playing at our preferred Ziegfeld (the Ziegfeld will instead be running The Great Gatsby as of the following week, which sucks because that's where we saw the two previous Iron Man movies), so now I have to figure out a decent screen somewhere in Manhattan that's convenient for everyone to get to and that has decent bars nearby for the after-movie discussion.

I just checked the current ticket availability and thanks to the corporate impasse, IRON MAN 3 is currently listed as only playing at one theater in the entirety of Manhattan — so-so venue on 62nd Street and 1st Avenue — a tiny screen in Williamsburg that will be a bitch for most of my crew to reach (except for one who lives in that area) and a tiny hole in the wall screen in Cobble Hill, which is not far from me but the screen is ridiculously small. And those are the only theaters playing it in the entirety of the five boroughs — and I do mean ONLY — so I wrote my crew with that info and thus far three of them agree with my proposal to wait until the corporations hash things out. I'm fine with waiting but some in my crew may commit violence in the streets if their Tony Stark itch is not scratched as soon as possible. Oh, and of course all of this means that unless the impasse gets sorted out in time, the four-film all-day Iron Man marathon consisting of IRON MAN, IRON MAN 2, THE AVENGERS, and a day-early screening of IRON MAN 3, ain't gonna happen. I was really looking forward to that...