Early UK Release For Star Trek Into Darkness
1 min readStar Trek fans in the U.K. will get the see Star Trek into Darkness earlier than fans in the U.S., as the release date there has just been changed.
“In summer 2013, pioneering director J.J. Abrams will deliver an explosive action thriller that takes Star Trek Into Darkness,” said an announcement regarding the event.
The UK release date is now May 9, 2013.
Simon Pegg tweeted about the date change. “Looks like Star Trek Into Darkness will land in the UK first,” he said. “Release date May 9th. That’s about eight weeks away. Not long considering.”
So in other words it will hit Pirate Bay before the US release.
I’m not British but, given the tone of some of the exchanges here lately, I can’t help but think this is poetic justice for UK fans.
I do feel sorry for Japanese Trek fans though, with a release date of 23 AUG(!) per Paramount’s official site: https://apps.paramountpictures.com/movie/startrek/releasedates/release-dates.html
What would Sulu say???
This is madness. An English version released early? Are they crazy? It seems they are just begging for the pirates to out this one up/out. I’d like to think this is some sort of sophisticated Viacom/Paramount trap for the Pirates, but I really doubt it.
It is all because of the trade agreements and it has possibly to do with the complicated underlying financing of this movie and the movie distributors (especially in 3D cinemas) Considering the recent economic problems in the US, it is probably financially better to expose the movie overseas, get the hype going, and then show it in the US. (Considering how much money can be made by releases in other countries, demographics are a much less concern.)
The thing is that movies and television is a much more global market than the often held insular views across North America. Negative comments for such early release of this Star Trek movie clearly show the given expectations that Americans must be first in everything, whose needs are more of a priority than the rest of us.
Considering that two-thirds of movie profits are made beyond the US is undertsandable. For example, box office sales were $22.6 billion versus only $10.2 billion in the US/Canada, whose overseas profits have increases by 10% to 30% while US profit margins have been slowly reducing in recent years. Films shown overseas are shown in over 124,000 digital cinemas, of which 40,000 are in US/Canada. (If you want to read more about this, see the pdf “Theatrical Market Statistics 2011” of the American Motion Picture Association, Inc. (MPAA) http://www.mpaa.org/resources/5bec4ac9-a95e-443b-987b-bff6fb5455a9.pdf )
It will be interesting to see in which order the DVD/ Blu-Ray release, which on past experience is sometimes weeks or month ahead of the rest of the world. Again these are often business strategies to exhort the maximum profit from all movie consumers.
Another poignant issue is movie seat costs, which are often more expensive in overseas theatres than in the US, though recently seeing movies in the US is becoming more expensive. This mostly explains drops in movie attendances in the US, especially during times of recessions. I.e. In the US since 2008.
In the end, there are many factors in film distribution, and although it is disappointing to US moviegoers, there are many other underlying reasons when films are released. That life.
“Negative comments for such early release of this Star Trek movie clearly show the given expectations that Americans must be first in everything, whose needs are more of a priority than the rest of us.”
Or maybe they are just fans of Star Trek and hoped to see the movie as soon as possible, as opposed to being part of the one-man international war you seem to believe you are heroically waging in comments on Trek news sites.
Ergo. I’m not American, therefore I’m not Star Trek fan. Is that what you are implying?
Really, if this situation were the other way around, and it were American cinemas first, therefore I’d have the right to make negative comments then too?
I only comment of this Trek news site, and I am not at war with anyone. Equity and fairness for all nations is what I advocate!
I know I’d rather wait for the American version than watch a pirated copy from the UK with silly English subtitles
A joke?