Star Trek Is Selling Tickets At Warp Speed

It’s easy to guess which movie is going to top the box office this week: J.J. Abrams’ Star Trek reboot has been building a massive buzz for months and so far, reviews of the film have been nothing short of glowing, with fans and critics alike already touting Star Trek as the most successful reboot attempt since Batman Begins.

Even Screen Rant’s own Vic Holtreman (self-confessed Trekkie) gave the new Star Trek a four-star review, and we all know how hard it is pleasing that guy!

Well, it seems as though the public has heard the word of Vic and are ready to hop aboard the Enterprise for a weekend adventure: According to MovieTickets.com’s advanced ticket sales tracking, Star Trek could be the first film of 2009 to break the $100 million barrier on opening weekend!

Here are the early tracking stats from MovieTickets.com:

As of 12 p.m. ET today, “Star Trek” ticket sales account for 83 percent of all ticket sales at MovieTickets.com today. MovieTickets.com is reporting 387 sold out performances for “Star Trek.”

387 sold out performances! Yikes! There going to be a lot of disappointed people who head to the theater to see Star Trek this weekend and end up having to settle for Wolverine, or worse yet, Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Something genuinely shocking that MovieTickets.com found in its tracking of Star Trek’s advanced ticket sales: It’s not just the nerd-boys who are going to be showing up for Star Trek this weekend! Check out these stats:

According to female ticket buyers polled at MovieTickets.com Apr. 21 to May 3:
52 percent are aware of the film “Star Trek”
63 percent of those aware of the film intend to see “Star Trek” opening weekend.
These are the highest pre-release polling numbers at MovieTickets.com in 2009 amongst female ticket buyers polled the week before a film’s release.

What…girls? At a Star Trek movie? They must be loving the baby-blues on Chris Pine or SOMETHING, because I would think that outside of a Trek convention (where the girls dress like William Shatner’s next alien conquest), I would figure the ladies would aviod a Trek film like the swine flu.

Spock and Kirk are just as surprised to hear that so many ladies are coming out to see them.

Kudos to J.J. Abrams for prettying up the theater this weekend!

Here are the rest of the ticket sales tracking figures, so you know exactly who you’ll be stuck next to in those sold-out theaters:

‘Star Trek’ is tracking well across all age groups at MovieTickets.com, save 60-plus. According to the same Apr. 21 – May 3 poll at MovieTickets.com, over 70 percent of three different age groups aware of ‘Star Trek’ say they intend to see the film opening weekend. Here’s a breakdown:
58 percent of Under-25s
70 percent of 25-34s
76 percent of 35-44s
78 percent of 45-59s
11 percent of 60-plus

Not a bad spread – but not too far off from the crowd we here at Screen Rant predicted would be in attendance: Mostly young-to-middle age adults old enough to remember when a Star Trek show that didn’t suck was still on TV, and have a legitimate phobia of earworms thanks to Wrath of Khan.

However, the goal for this whole Star Trek reboot deal was to turn a whole new generation on to the deep-space voyages of the Enterprise, and while 58% of the under-25 crowd is suppossedly going to show up, I’m sure the studio would’ve liked that number to be in the 70% range as well. Of course these are just the first estimates of how Star Trek is going to do. When the space dust has settled, the youth crowd may be responsible for pushing Star Trek over the $100 million mark. Come Monday we’ll know for sure.

Will Star Trek be (as the TV spots are already calling it) the 2009 Iron Man?

Source: MovieTickets.com