In case people are curious how Stardust's release is being received aroud the country I thought it might be interesting to post some notes on what the audiences are like at the showings near us. So, I'll start, and if you're curious about how well the movie is doing you can post your notes too and maybe we can get data from lots of cities. (These aren't my notes about what I thought of the film -- there's another thread for that -- just how packed the house was, and so on.)

We saw Stardust at the Lincoln Plaza Theatre in Bellevue WA, a dense suburb of Seattle, around which many of the area's technology companies are clustered. They are doing two showings a night of Stardust, on one of their smaller screens. At the 7pm premiere showing, I counted approximately 190 of the 210 seats occupied. The audience was well behaved and generally laughed at the appropriate parts. De Niro's performance stole the show, and audience laughter was raucous during his climactic encounter with one of the princes. About thirty people stayed to the end of the credits.

The prescreen trailers shown were Mr. Magorium's Magic Emporium, The Golden Compass, Spiderwick Chronicles, The Dark is Rising, and Beowulf (in that order).

(What a great idea for a thread! Welcome to the Board!)

I was rather disappointed that here in Toronto Stardust only got one theatre in our giant downtown megaplex, and even then it was way in the back. Rushhour 3 got better treatment.

That said however, the theatre was packed to the hilt and stragglers were hard-pressed to find a seat. If it wasn't sold out, I'd be surprised.

The audience was very receptive and we all laughed our asses off. There were definitely fans in the audience for once the credits rolled we could hear various discussions of comparisons between the book and the movie.

Personally, I loved it and thought the screenplay was adapted well. The performances were great fun and my fiance did compare it to being "this generation's Princess Bride" - which is a good thing. In fact, I'll be seeing it again next week.

Theater decently full, but definately not sold out at a theater that had it on one screen only. Good audience reaction, but not enough turnout to leave me with much hope of high weekend returns

it was sold out at my theater...and the audience was a great mix of people...young and old. i went to see it with my mother last night...and we both loved it.

Variety article about how Stardust got $2.99 million on Friday (yay!) compared to Rush Hour 3's $18.5 million (boo).

My husband and I saw the 7 pm showing on Friday night at the AMC-Loews movie theater in the newest southeast shopping development called the Waterfront near Pittsburgh, PA . There was one theater devoted to the film in this megaplex. It was two-thirds to three-quarters full with a diverse crowd but definitely not sold out. I may take my daughter this afternoon since she was working Friday night.

Unfortunately, the only theater showing Stardust in my area right now is in a dilapidated empty mall. I am hoping that soon one of our independent theaters will get it, we have an excellent one that seems perfect for Stardust.

I'm curious who makes the decision or how the decision gets made, which theater shows it. If it had opened in the major megaplex here it would have gotten a lot better turnout - it's in a megamall that's jam-packed almost every day of the week, and on weekends people just show up at the mall to shop, eat and see a movie. I think Stardust would have scored a lot of walk-by couples just dropping in on a whim to see it.

Anyway, the theater was a little more than half full. The audience laughed and laughed, they seemed to enjoy it very much.

...

I was annoyed when I was with my friend buying tickets. A couple behind us were talking:

Her (curious): What's Stardust?
Him (dismissively): Oh, some fantasy. Castles, dragons, princesses, that stuff.

I muttered, 'There aren't any dragons. No dragons!'

...

Jacksonville FL, 3:15. Full house! The crowd responded correctly at all the right parts -- laughter, gasping, all that. And the best part? Applause at the end of the movie. I love that.

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I'm curious who makes the decision or how the decision gets made, which theater shows it.

My understanding is that in first run, it is up to the exhibitor to decide which movies get shown in his theatre and which screens they go on. But, it is the distributor's job to convince the individual theatre owners to exhibit a film, so there is a lot of room for negotiation, strong-arming, or bribery. Usually the exhibitor gets a percentage of all the gross box office receipts, but the distributor guarantees a minimum "floor" fee to cover the theatre's expenses, rather like a novelist's advance. So, the distributor loses money if the theatre runs not-so-full showings.

Generally if a movie's shown at the little indy house instead of the megaplex, it's either because the megaplex didn't think the movie would do well, wanted too high a fee from the distributor (the overhead of the small screens is lower), or because the distributor didn't think it was worthwhile to cut deals like "if you don't show Stardust in August we won't sell you the Bruckheimer flick in November."

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When OV and I went to the movie on Friday night, it was packed (sold out?), but only playing in one theatre, and it wasn't that big. However, the audience seemed to love it (at least the first half...see my post in the Stardust Movie thread).

I saw it again the next day, Saturday afternoon. It was also playing only in one theatre...but I was totally impressed that the one theatre was a HUGE one and just as full as the one the night before (and in the afternoon, too)! Unfortunately, the audience didn't react nearly as much as the audience the night before.

I'll be seeing it at least once more...maybe twice. My mom, aunt & boyfriend all have to see it and I'm glad to take them.

Our theater was packed on Friday night - but it was only showing twice all night on one screen. (Of course, it was a 4-screen theater, and all their movies were showing on just one screen . . . .)

According to Yahoo, it placed 4th in the weekend box office.

I live in Sunbury, Pennsylvania... very small city. Anyway, our theatre had three showings on August 10th(also the day I went to see it). I went to the 7:45 showing with my five year old and there were probably about sixty people there, if even that. Most of the people there were either retired couples or kids and their parents but everyone seemed to really enjoy it.

I just went to see it today with a friend. It was his second time seeing it. Its showing on one of the regular screens at an AMC 24 and its showing five times total through the whole day. It was about 1:30pm on a friday, so hardly any crowd. Brilliantly done cinematics, though.

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Originally posted by Tongster:
According to Yahoo, it placed 4th in the weekend box office.

I realized a few days ago (using Aitapata's link to Variety for the numbers) that the opening weekend for Underdog was two million bucks more than Stardust's one week later. Underdog opens: $11 mil. Stardust opens: $9 mil. It made me depressed. I not down on Underdog - I loved Underdog's show - but the movie looked horrid.

Well, thank God for the Russians

after Underdog....that IS depressing