By: Randall Warlick
Nowadays, many movies are released on both regular 2D screens and the more expensive 3D or IMAX screens at the same time. For example, The Dark Knight was released on July 18, 2008. On that day, the movie was released on both regular screens and IMAX screens; you could choose which version you wanted to see. This is rather common, especially with 3D movies, which are becoming more and more ubiquitous. However, Paramount did something a little different with the most recent Mission Impossible movie. For the first time in the US, the IMAX version of the movie was released a full 5 days before the regular version (*1).
Before the movie was released, there were likely people who were already planning on seeing the movie in IMAX, so for them, this news was not disruptive in any way. But what about the people who wanted to see the movie as soon as they could, but did not want to pay the higher price for the IMAX ticket? Paramount was undoubtedly hoping that these people would bite the bullet and pay the extra cash to see the movie sooner. From a marketing perspective, this approach was very clever, because chances are, people will always do just that: they will bite the bullet to see an anticipated movie earlier, and they will see the movie in IMAX, even though they would not have done that if the regular version were available for viewing.
