Take Out The Trash Day: Vue Cinema and the Mystery Movie.

Last month Vue Cinemas started a monthly 'Mystery Movie.' You buy your ticket to a film having no idea what it is. If within twenty minutes you think the film blows, you can get your money back.

Why are they doing this? Well, to make money obviously. The hope is that it'll bring in more movie-goers. I didn't like the rather pretentious thing that Mark De Quervain, the marketing director of Vue said. "It’s all about getting people to see films they normally wouldn’t see, to see films that wouldn’t be their normal choice of film. We want to broaden their film repertoire.”"

Oh gee, thanks Mark. Thank you for enlightening all of us; without you we'd all be going to repeat viewings of 'Hannah Montana: The Movie'.

What I suspect is going on is that this is a way for the distributors to dump their trash on us. The films that have tested badly or that they fear are likely to flop -- these 'mystery movie' figures will count towards their box-office take. Meaning that, at 6:30pm on a Tuesday they can fill the nations Vue cinemas; meaning full audiences see, I dunno - some struggling Ray Liotta/Ben Affleck movie or whatever.

The first Mystery Movie was the new 'Star Trek,' which is admittedly a pretty cool choice - but then the first film was always going to be. Anyways, I'm open-minded-- anything that gets people into the cinema is a good thing, I just fear that we're going to be used to hand over money for films we don't want to see. And whilst, yes, they do offer your money back after twenty minutes; it's unlikely many people will take that option.

Care to share?

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