Ahoy, squirts! Quint here. With last weekend being the weakest of the year at the box office and the Raiders of the Lost Ark IMAX rerelease showing the biggest per-screen average of any movie that weekend it’s not all that surprising to me that Paramount is pushing forward with this Raiders rerelease.
Starting today the film will open on 300 digital screens across North America. I’m willing to bet (since it’s a hypothetical, I can’t lose!) that if Paramount had nutted up at the beginning and done a similar release last weekend they would have taken the weekend. Raiders is one of the most crowd-pleasingest movies of all time. Dads want to take their sons and moms want to take their daughters to experience it. It’s edgy, but still a kind of family bonding film. It was for me and my family and almost all the families I grew up around.
I know this all probably started as a way to drum up publicity for the upcoming Blu-Ray set, but I hope Hollywood starts to see that there’s nationwide interest in seeing these kinds of films big. Not one-night only shit, but commercials on TV, banner ads on websites, newspaper ads all around the country wide release events.
So, check your local listings, take the little ones and watch their minds blow out the back of their heads much like yours did back in the day.
Oh, and you should also hate the world for not being on the Paramount Lot yesterday because Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford turned up with Paramount’s own Brad Grey in tow to screen the movie.
I was lucky enough to attend Geoff Boucher’s Hero Complex screening with both Ford and Spielberg doing a Q&A and it was awesome. After many minutes of praise aimed at Harrison, Ford gave Spielberg shit for never casting him in any other non-Indy movie. “I have to wait for Tom Hanks to get a series…”
Anyway, good news all around. Now I have to write up my Skywalker Ranch piece… where do I begin? When I got to hold a Sankara Stone or when I walked into the breakroom and saw Dennis Muren and Ben Burtt sitting at a table politely conversing over coffee… hrmm…
-Eric Vespe
”Quint”
quint@aintitcool.com
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