Wal-Mart Selling Advance Tickets To See 'Man Of Steel'

Wal-Mart has it all: food, clothes, toys, sporting equipment, electronics... and soon they'll add advance movie tickets. Warner Bros. is conducting a little experiment next month, as Wal-Mart will be the first place fans can buy advance tickets to see Zack Snyder's Superman film Man of Steel. On May 18, tickets will be available at select Wal-Mart stores for special advance screenings of the film taking place on June 13, a day before its scheduled June 14 opening. General advance ticket sales aren't expected to start until May 21 or 22.

There will be a total of 6,372 advance screenings at 2,379 different theaters and each person will be able to buy four tickets for either a 2D or 3D screening. Each ticket will also include a special code to pre-order Man of Steel on Blu-ray or digital download as well an exclusive Man of Steel comic written by screenwriter David Goyer. 

Variety was one of the outlets to report on this interesting development and, if you read Superhero Bits, we mentioned it last week.

According to Warner Bros., this is an experiment that – if successful – could start a trend of studios selling advance tickets for films exclusively at traditional stores (Target, Best Buy, etc.). The stores see it as a way to drive customers who are staying home and doing their shopping back into the store by offering them something they can only get in store. For the studios, it opens the film's marketing up to a whole other demographic, one who may not have a lot of interest in the advance movie screenings.

With this announcement, you can pretty much forget Man of Steel making any kind of general early bow, as some films do over the summer. There's also no answer whether or not these nearly 2,400 theaters will have advance screenings that aren't exclusively open to Wal-Mart. However, looking at the above tickets (7 p.m.) and insane amount of screenings it seems likely. Anyone who doesn't purchase at Wal-Mart, though, won't get the perks.

Long story short, this is a deal that could foreshadow some major changes down the road. What are your thoughts?