Christopher Nolan's Interstellar is one of the most anticipated movies of the year. But just in case any fans are on the fence about pre-buying tickets for the film (which opens wide November 7th) Fandango is offering an incentive that will go right to their sci-fi loving hearts. One lucky ticket buyer will win a trip to space.
Fandango has partnered with Xcor, a private company that expects to be taking people into space sometime next year. The winner will fly aboard the Xcor Lynx which is designed to take one pilot and one passenger 100 km into space and then return to earth. (The ship should be able to make four trips per day.) The passenger will get to experience weightlessness and see the earth from a vantage only a few people have experienced.
It's not the planet jumping epic adventure Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway embark on in Nolan's film but it's a close as a private citizen can get.
"The idea of a trip to space was a way to showcase what's on the screen," says Adam Rockmore, head of marketing at Fandango.
The trip, worth $100,000, is Fandago's biggest give away yet. Domestic ticket sales have plateaued at around 1.3 billion tickets sold per year and its easier than ever to watch high quality films at home. The window between when a film is in theaters and when it's on home video is also shrinking to the point where in some cases, it doesn't exist at all.
That's made it an incredibly challenging environment for everyone involved in (what they call in Hollywood) the exhibition business.
While big theaters are investing in new screens and fancy seats, and small theaters are turning to subscription services to fill theaters, ticket seller are busy coming up with their own ways to sell more tickets.
Fandango has responded to the challenge by offering more and more sweepstakes and freebies to go along with ticket sales. They've offered trips to premiers for films like The Hobbit and Thor. For the movie Ride Along they partnered with Chrysler to give away a car and for Gone Girl they offered a free Nook ebook download with every ticket sold.
"When people buy tickets in advance, they're locked into going to the theater," says Rockmore. "Our job is to give them enough incentive to buy that ticket."
Tickets just went on sale for The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1 which hits theaters November 21st and it's been the biggest pre-sale of 2014 to date for Fandango. It's debatable whether a sweepstakes to win a trip to the film's premier in London moved the needle much as web site visitors had already declared Mockingjay the most-anticipated film of 2014.
But sweepstakes tied to smaller movies, like The Best of Me, can make a difference. Fandango is offer ticket buyers a chance to meet country music singer Hunter Hayes.
And the incentives can make a difference for Fandango, which competes with MovieTickets.com.
"We want our users to know that every time they use Fandango they get some kind of value added," says Rockmore.
Now they'll just have to figure out how to top offering a trip to space.
